The Progressive Governors’ Forum (PGF) says Boko Haram’s philosophy of destroying education in Nigeria is being helped by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU)’s constant strikes.
Director-General of the forum, Salihu Moh. Lukman stated this in a Sunday statement titled, “ASUU and Indeterminate Power Struggle – The Boko Haram Logic”.
He warned that the development of the nation’s education system would continue to be stunted where university lecturers embarked on strike in four out of 20 years.
Recall that ASUU on December 23 suspended its nine-month-old strike.
He said that a different approach must be explored to resolve the lingering challenges instead of the constant resort to strikes.
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According to him, the university lecturers have caused heavy damage to the nation’s education sector by constantly embarking on strike.
Lukman said it was also wrong for the university lecturers to go about boasting not to have lost any battle against the government in the past.
“These are being said without any remorse or acknowledgement of the damage ASUU strikes have done to the Nigerian educational system. That we are even thinking that closure of universities and our schools can produce any form of victory with reference to any form of outcome demonstrates our nasty state of mind, which brings us closer to the Hobbesian reality that civilisation would have long resolved.
“How can anyone with a child whose dream and aspiration should include being educated, celebrate in any form the closure of schools? What difference is such a logic from the Boko Haram objective of abolishing western education?
“It is very sad that it is common knowledge now that in the last twenty-one years, ASUU was on strike for a record period of more than four years. Worse still is the fact that we have people who claim to be public intellectuals that present such a reprehensible scorecard and by any standard a scandalous credential as achievement is sickening.
“At this rate, we may as well accept that Boko Haram terrorists are also public intellectuals. In any event, who is a public intellectual? Aren’t Boko Haram terrorists engaged in critical thinking, research and reflections? If their mission is to abolish western education, how farther away from that mission is the activity of any group that causes closure of our universities for nine months in one academic calendar?
“If our universities are closed for nine months, what does that mean to the remainder of the education system? Assuming that secondary students are able to pass their exams, will they gain admission into universities? Where will the space come from when existing students have not graduated?”