By Shamsiyya Hamza Sulaiman
Listening to BBC Hausa service this morning where parents and students were, not only lamenting but, condemning the increase in fees by public Universities came to me as a rude surprise!
ASUU was forced to go on strike for 8 months to force the governments (Federal and State) to increase funding to the universities attended by the children of the poor.
In its wisdom, ASUU reasoned that due to the stark economic realities of the country where poverty is the order of the day and majority of the people are finding it extremely difficult to even feed, any increase in fees would compound the suffering of the people and would make many students to drop out due to their inability to afford whatever fee increment.
Unfortunately, parents, students and others condemned ASUU for the agitation to the point of vilifying and insulting the members of the Union for respecting the leadership of the Union to go on the strike.
After a lot of pressure from the government, the courts and insults from the parents and students, ASUU called off its strike without achieving much. ASUU later became an object of mockery by the students and their parents and the government and its agents were applauded for 'dealing' with ASUU.
Now, if the government was supported by the parents and students not to accede to the agitation of ASUU to increase funding to public Universities and the Universities must have sufficient funds to run them, where do the parents and students expect the money to fund the Universities to come from, apart from parents?
Even when Mr President told the whole world that the government can't fund the Universities alone ( a clear contradiction to his position on this before he became President) and that funding the Universities should be the responsibility of the government and parents, the same students and parents saw nothing wrong with this position by Mr President. Their only preoccupation then was to intimidate ASUU by condemnation and insults to collapse its agitation midway and resume so that students can continue their studies and get certificates without anything in their brains.
More disturbing and disappointing were the comments of some people that know next to nothing about how a university is run. Just because they were once University students and now privileged, they arrogate to themselves to be in positions to know all and ignorantly advocating that Nigerian Universities should be funded the same way and manner Universities are funded in the USA, UK etc without taking time to find out how those countries arrived at the point where and how their Universities are so funded. They refuse to find out that those countries invested heavily along the line to make their universities attractive for grants that the Universities are deriving a lot from today. They also refuse to acknowledge the fact the those countries are led by people that are selfless, proactive, patriotic and always thinking right that investment in education is investment for the future of the country.
When all these were happening, many of us started thinking that maybe we were out of touch with reality. That, maybe, the economy is so buoyant and the parents so comfortable and capable of paying whatever fees charged by the universities, that's why they were disgusted by the ASUU agitation and looked at ASUU as a nuisance.
Now, in preparation for the next academic session, one university after the other are displaying their new charges and hell has started to be let loose by the parents and their student children! Very callous, indeed!
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Since ASUU was looked upon as a nuisance for agitating for increased funding of Universities by the government, which it is hesitant to do, and we want our Universities to be comparable to universities in America and the UK such as Harvard, Howard, Stanford, Yale, Cambridge, Oxford etc, funds must come from elsewhere and that elsewhere is obviously the parents for now, before they can be so equipped and placed in positions as to attract meaningful grants!
It is useless complaining now. Parents should pay whatever fees charged by Universities.
I say congratulations to the students whose parents are capable of paying these fees!
To those whose parents can't pay the fees, you should go elsewhere and learn other skills. Best of luck!