The University Teacher – Out, out, there on strike

What is Semester
What is session
What is Calendar
These are common terms in Universities
Sacrosanct and respected in polite, proud, urban Ivory towers.
But no, not in Nigeria
While dons elsewhere
Seek knowledge, advance learning
Teachers here seek
Power, seek money
Our allowance must be paid forward:-
Musical instruments allowances,
Allowance to keep our step-mothers comfortable,
Allowance for sleeping late,
Allowance for magazine published in Montenegro,
What about our fresh air allowance?
The Nigerian Dons must be comfortable.
Learning in Nigerian University
By pamphlets, handouts and lifted pages
Students who are happy to cut corners relish
These plagiarized papers.
Contended to read for examinations
Rather than learning for knowledge
Facilities, equipment rot away
Antiquated, outdated instruments of learning
Governments and teachers trading blames
On decaying and decadent system.
Public Universities and their teachers
Have become nightmares to Nigerians
In and out of the classroom
They squander the nation's wealth on trivialities
On imponderables
Up, up spring new schools
Private institutions
With glamorous names
And holistic mission and romantic vision
Vowing they will reshapen education and give
New directions
Religious stalwarts with big hearts
Ploughing, burroughing into tertiary institutions
Carrying the gospel of discipline and integrity
Into the Educational sector.
Heads must come together or roll together
Moderation in demands
Renewed vigour in re-investments
Structures, equipment, programmes must be
Re-invigorated
Famished facilities brought to life
Goodness!
The nation must be saved
From this dog fight:
For a nation that toys with the education and
Cultivation of its youth
Is heading for oblivion
Comment
University education especially at public level has become a
huge joke and an embarrassement to many in Nigeria. Replete
with all antisocial elements, students have increasingly
contributed to the problems of society. Fed with half-baked
materials, taught by teachers who regard themselves more
important than the community they are out to serve, tertiary
education has become a nightmare to many.
More than students perhaps; University Teachers have
consistently diminished the aura to which these citadels were
regarded. Walking out – their jobs at intervals that can almost
be predicted their behavior and social responsibility may now
be seen to fall below the national average.
The solution? Some solution lies in private participation in
establishing and funding of tertiary education. But the cost is
enormous, perhaps three times that of public system. There is
the advantage however of students spending the minimum
number of years (semester) in private schools whereas the
period may extend to five or six years in public institutions
because of the regular walk-out of academic staff in the latter.
Chief Oladeji Fasuan published this poem in his book, Poetic
Reflections of Lively Issues.