Successful societies thrive on systems and not on programmes. It hurts to see our citadels of learning shut down for five months running and life is going on as if it’s normal. Which society keeps knowledge acquisition in abeyance and talks of progress? We joke a lot in my country but nowhere is better than home.

Whoever is wondering why we have endless ASUU strikes should ask on what system we are running that qualifies for education policy upon which successive administrations can stand? The last I can remember was the 6-3-3-4 system of education.

I recall the excitement that greeted the 6-3-3-4 policy as pronounced by the Late Professor Aliu Babatunde Fafunwa when he was education minister under the self-styled Military President Ibrahim Babangida. How did we fare with that policy? How far did it go beyond the promises on paper?

Someone asked me where is the 3-3 in the 6-3-3-4? I imagine Professor Fafunwa had thought that the junior and senior secondary school models would pave way for vocational training and technical skills acquisition to empower the informal sector and reduce employment. Decades after, all junior and senior secondary school students still queue for university admission even when they lack capacity.

We have built all our hope around the university system that is still spoon-fed by the government at federal and state levels. Federal Government is not blinking and ASUU is not smiling. Two elephants fight and the grass is suffering. If only we know that any argument for or against ASUU toys with the future of this nation. I don’t join in the argument of who is right or wrong but all I know is that this system is crumbling.

Just about this time last year, I wrote “Certificate my Foot”. https://akinjnrla.com/certificate-my-foot/ If we are not seeing the need for us to revive technical education, we are toying with the future of a generation yet unborn. The world has since left us behind as we spend a fortune producing paper tigers without a support system.

If we are not seeing this problem, then there is a big problem, more because lack of problem is a problem in itself. Education sector is comatose and health sector is gasping. The industries groan in pains and labourers thin out in the farms. Which other industry thrives in Nigeria apart from politics and banditry? Dangerous bend we are, we need tact to negotiate this bend.

Generational success in governance is built on systems but not on programmes. Only then can we say that government is a continuum. What we have in Nigeria is more of adhoc programmes without a handshake with successive administrations. What manner of society where successive administrations repudiate the promises made by the government before them!

The ASUU challenge pervades the entire system if we care to be truthful. This system will decay if we leave it to rot. Change of government beckons in all states in weeks to come. Education is on the concurrent list of government. I have come to say one more time that we should dignify technical education if Nigeria should come out of the woods. Ours is a systemic defect, adhoc solutions are distractions.

Dear Federal Government of Nigeria and ASUU, what shall we tell the future?

©️Akin Oluwadare Jnr
15 August 2022