Mr. President,
Please do not mistake this piece for an attack on your person because
it is not. Neither would I want you to see me as one of those attention-
seeking people because I am not. Of course, Sir, I am also not the son
of any governor, senator, local government chairman or any political
office holder, otherwise, I would have no business writing such an open
letter to you because it is against my family’s ethics to ‘talk while
eating’.
I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness of educational misery,
saying, “Prepare the way for either a future of political stability and
economic boom or prepare for worse than what religious extremists are
meting out to our country now”.
As I write on this sultry day, I am completely at a loss to know what to
make of my future from here.
If this were just the case, it would, probably, be an insignificant reason
to go on the rampage with the sword of the pen.
But, I write on behalf of the millions of dreams that are getting
squashed by the day as the total shut-down of our universities persists.
I write on behalf of the future of the several hundreds of thousands
who have been privileged, amidst the stiff competition for admission, to
grasp tertiary education but may end up worse than their
disadvantaged counterparts, since they may never finish, much less
finish on schedule their educational pursuits. The handwriting on the
wall, clearly now, more than ever before foretells a dangerous twist to
the continuing imbroglio between your administration
and the Academic Staff Union of Universities
(ASUU). I do not know if the public keeps the date as much as we do
but it is well over 65 days already and I cannot help but wonder if
anyone really cares what becomes of our street-wandering
undergraduates. If I had a next life, I hope to never be a Nigerian or
be born with a silver spoon because the poor are really just ‘on their
own’ as long as our government is concerned.
Mr President, in three simple words, “We are tired”.
We, the students in the federal universities, are always at the receiving
end of every impasse between ASUU and the government and all I can
ask for now is that you and your think tank reconsider your stand on
the matter. We can only bear this much! I am not ASUU’s spokesman
but it is only logical that I expect your administration to honour the
2009 agreement with the Union so normalcy can return to our campuses
and of course, our disenchanted academic lives.
Personally, I have spent more years than is required to have my first
and second degrees and yet I am grappling to take a Bachelor’s degree
out of an institution that only recently had an internal strike because
you would have our name ‘rebranded’.
Mr President, every day this strike continues, more dreams die and
more future riff -raff are born. It is my firm belief that children still
do bear the sins of their fathers and even when you are no more,
posterity will remember your progenitors for good or ill based on how
you handle this national educational crisis we suffer now. It goes
without saying that for 14 years that your party has held sway over the
affairs of this nation, we cannot boast of a Nigerian university (not a
single one)
amongst the first 2000 in the world. This is more than enough reason
to release the requisite fund for the upgrade of our educational
infrastructure as well as the welfare of the future’s moulders.
It will only be emphatic to say that we can get out of our educational
system as much as we invest in it and though investment in educational
is long term, it is also long- rewarding. Your administration will only be
breeding poor intellectuals, who will, in turn, produce another
generation of mediocre graduates and in 10 years, what do we have,
sir? A national carnage! Our unborn children are in jeopardy of being
societal scum even before their conception. But you can change all of
this!
The greatest weapon of mass destruction is to put a teacher who knows
nothing before the students.
This will be the case if your administration does not honour the 2009
agreement with ASUU such that lecturers’ welfare gets taken care of.
Mr President, the one second of your time which I asked for is almost
up but I am optimistic that if you give utmost diligence to putting an
end to the incessant strikes that have been plaguing our tertiary
educational system as much as you do to security matters or party
issues and conventions, we would not be where we are today:
struggling to maintain peace in our land.
I reiterate my advice, sir. Honour the 2009 agreement with ASUU so we
may return to our lecture rooms and pick up the pieces of our
scattered semesters. So I can round off my first degree programme and
go on to patriotically serve my fatherland. So, I can focus on growing
my baby company to maturity and provide jobs for the teeming
unemployed youths. So, I can get married, give my mother her first
grandchild and keep my father’s name.
So, I can fulfil my dreams of helping young people reach the zenith of
their potential through my writing, public speaking and role-modelling.
Mr President, help me and my fellow undergraduates live decent lives
even if our parents are not among the top one per cent who squander
our national earnings in the name of political office holders.
Would you do this for me, for us, for Nigeria’s future? I hope you do.
Thank you, sir, for giving me a second of your time.
Source:- MyNews24
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