The past couple of months have been the worst for the larger community of Nigerian students because again, ASUU struck! This, grievously to say, is a recurring decimal in the academic sojourn of a typical Nigerian student. The satirical saying of ASUU being the “best striker” in the world is now a common platitude in the Nigerian campus lexicon.
In continuance, I can bet on you being familiar with that accepted knowledge about life being already ahead of you as a Nigerian. And in this case of ASUU and the Nigerian student, the forces of life and nature may well have been several leads ahead if you’re unfortunate to find yourself in a public university.
It’s already a harrowing experience finding yourself in this stifling part of the cosmos much more in a Nigerian public university where even the laws of general relativity hold the most on earth. Because in Nigerian campuses, time dilates and students tend to spend more time on campus in comparison to their peers in saner climes.
Again, it’s also quite bizarre to know that most graduates of Nigerian public universities have at least a gory tale to regale us with or lament about on certain moments when their academic life was on hold or in some cases, truncated. Sadly, the bar has been lowered shamelessly and we now compare our academic years to see who suffered more academic setbacks within their period of study.
The strike which started early this year, and culminated with the admission of fresh students, did not seem like what will take so long to end. At least, this was the honest hope of the newly admitted students of the University of Ibadan who are yet to fully experience the hustle and bustle of campus life and are still basking in the euphoria of being among the “chosen.” This was evident in their matriculation pictures dotting every nook and cranny of the internet.
More particularly for some returning students, the strike action did not give room to exchange love notes, bouquets of roses, and other trivial treats on Valentine’s Day for it was a few weeks that became eight months of excruciating strike making it the second-longest academic strike in Nigeria, yet.
In successive volumes, we will make an incisive synopsis of what transpired during the eight-month-long strike. And borrowing the words of R. J. Blizzard, “remembering is redemption.” Now sit back and anticipate Volume two of this series.
Peter Adeyemo and Afeezah Wojuade.