by ’Sola Fagorusi (sfagorusi@gmail.com)
The Academic Staff Union of Universities has been on strike for
56 days. It translates that public universities students across the
country have had to put the noble quest for knowledge within the four
walls of a university on hold. As an undergraduate, I once had a rare
privilege to be at one of ASUU’s meetings and what I took away from the
experience was the quality blend of arguments and counter arguments on
the issues discussed.
It’s
safe to say that the body had rightly put the issues that triggered her
latest strike under a high resolution intellectual microscope before
instructing her membership to embark on strike when it did on 1st of
July this year. What is largely missing is the fulsome information about
the details of the strike on the website of the body.
Like a few others, I have tried engaging a number of students who are
the victims-in-chief of the on-going strike on what the bone of
contentions are; the offers and explanations are varied. I am not sure
of why the website of the body has been on break in the midst of an
on-going strike with several meetings, discussions and decision being
made. I am certain that whoever monitors the back end of that site would
have noticed a rise in the volume of hits on the site. And this is for a
single reason – people are hungry for information.
In a new media age, it is assumed that a Google search or a simple
search on a site like ASUU’s would give all the necessary information
and timeline of this present strike and other strikes since this is not
the first time that ASUU would be embarking on a strike on similar
grounds. Like other Nigerians, what I have heard repeatedly is that this
strike is about a renege on the 2009 agreement. No social media class
or discussion would leave out the fact that information sharing and
detailing is easier at this time given the diverse platforms allowing
for same.
Unlike what one would have expected, especially since ASUU’s demand
is also about demand for infrastructural upgrade in the universities,
there has been apathy on the part of students to dutifully engage the
public and government in support of a request which will majorly benefit
them. But this will not happen when the information is scanty and the
issues seem esoteric. Thanks to the traditional press coverage, those
who seek to know find what they can.
The existence of a website by the body at www.asuunigeria.org is
commendable. It however leaves much to be desired when the latest
information on the site is about the 2011 strike which ASUU embarked on
following a meeting from Tuesday November 29, to Thursday December 1,
2011 at the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
ASUU’s Facebook page (if it’s the official one) however appears to
have more on it that the site though there is no plug-in to it from the
official website address. With a 20,476 following on its Facebook page,
the site seems pretty active even if the last update was on the July 27,
saying, “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our students
of tomorrow. We must move forward.” Its post on July 1, when the strike
was declared, got the kind of attention one would expect on such page
with 260 likes, 579 comments and 547 shares.
As lecturers to students who practically breathe social media, it is
perhaps high time ASUU also took its social media engagements serious.
Compared to its Anglophone neighbour, Ghana’s University Teachers’
Association of Ghana. ASUU’s effort is a giant leap. The Ghanaian
umbrella body for academics in public universities also embarked on a
strike on August 1st. With no website of social media presence to show
for it, anyone attempting a chronology or analysis will solely have to
depend on newspaper sources for information.
The Ministry of Education, which is responsible in Nigeria for
formulating a national policy on education and also with a mandate to
collect and collate data for purposes of educational planning and
financing also has no website — except for a link on the official
government’s site, detailing the curriculum vitae of the Minister of
Education, Professor Rukkayat Rufai, and the minister of State,
Barrister Wike Nyesom.
For a ministry with 21 agencies and departments under it, it should
offer more than this. It is on platforms like theirs that researchers
should find information about the number of students in public and
private Nigerian universities. It is on their sites that opportunities
for Nigerian students, including scholarships, should be readily
accessible. It is on their site that outstanding thesis abstracts should
be found and also the allocations and budget of such a key ministry.
But then, the students’ umbrella body, the National Association of
Nigerian Students, which one would have expected to be a good example in
social media deployment for educational use, is a far departure. The
official site of the group at www.nans.edu.ng has had its hosting
suspended. The Facebook page also has a paltry 4137 likes, with the
last post being that of September 5, 2011. But then, this is not the
NANS of Segun Okeowo, Olusegun Mayeigun, Lanre Arogundade, Chima Ubani
and other principled comrades. The last time NANS had a semblance of
decency was possibly when Daniel Onjeh was president. One can only
imagine the mobilisation that a group like NANS under these previous
leaderships would have robustly deployed social media for in the face of
the present strike.
The welfare of students would have been a concern. In an age where
several internship opportunities and vocational skills now abound, NANS
would have put up information on how students across the country can
link up with various platforms, including non-profits, to explore them,
rather than risiking the attendant consequence of being idle.
There would also be great understanding of the issues behind the
strike with the use of infographs on ASUU’s site and other social media
space. Infograhics are a quick solution to enable data visualisation and
possibly also a solution to the information overload coming from the
knowledge that there has been various ASUU strikes. It is also more
engaging and people love to share it. This is what ASUU also do asides
its justified demand of billions of earned, merited allowances and
infrastructure upgrade. It owes the public this responsibility
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