How ASUU strike has affected Nigerian students

To advise public university students to get a skill or take online courses now has already become a cliché. I suppose they have known what to do; that it is high time they moved on with their lives, with something, anything.

A number of students are currently in their parents’ house and working.

Others have refused to go home and are now paying the price for their perhaps precocious independence.

Every student appears to have moved on, but have they really moved on?

Has this strike not affected or stalled their life goals?

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Is there a way they can mitigate the effects of this disaster called ASUU strike later in the future? Are they going to turn out well after the strike or graduation?

These are questions we do not bother to ask; they are sad realities that are currently bedeviling public universities students and even their parents, whether the students are working or learning a skill.

The first problem is house rent.

Whether they occupy their rooms or not, every landlord will stretch his two hands to collect his house rent when their rent is due for payment.

In many cases, their parents are at the receiving end of this menace.

It is even more worrisome when the students themselves pay for rooms they are not living in, especially after they have travelled to another state to work, intern or learn a skill.

One might be tempted to say that this experience can help them build survival skills and all that rhetoric; but it is a different ballgame when they cannot completely take off their studentship garments from what they do or when the garment still restricts them from getting better jobs or when they have to work, upskill and sustain themselves with their own earned resources all at the same time.

Secondly, many students are growing old.

We all know the realities of getting admission into public varsities in Nigeria.

It takes a particularly few brilliant or smart students below the age of nineteen to get public university admission for highly competitive courses like medicine, engineering, law, and you name it.

Most students, especially those not so academically privileged in terms of their educational background, seldom tried two to four times before getting their admission.

Now let us imagine that these students get into a university at the end of 20, 21 or even 22 for 4 to 6-year courses. And ASUU strike visits them which then culminate in their losing a year or two.

Since ASUU strike is an annual ritual, they might end up losing 2-3 years of their academic calendar.

Before they graduate, they will have been in their very late twenties or not very early thirties.

Imagine! Aside highly competitive courses, some students, by some unfortunate design, gain admission to read some seemingly unprofessional courses in their early twenties. Imagine their fate or life by the time they will be graduating at the age of 28, 29, 30, 31 or more.

One might be naturally inclined to say that age is not a barrier to success.

As true as this is, I only wish one could say this when some recruiters put an age limit to most job descriptions or requirements: “Candidates must be below the age of 27”.

Except they venture into entrepreneurship, this strike is going to affect them in one way or the other, and this is a sad reality.

Furthermore, there is a growing amount of peer pressure and distractions in people’s late twenties and early thirties.

I find myself privileged to have got admission when I was barely 19.

Even at that, most of my coursemates were between the ages of 17 and 20 then.

Indeed, peer pressure or comparison is not really healthy, but some people need the pressure to galvanize them into action and noticeable advancement, and not everyone can manage peer pressure sufficiently.

For some people, pressure is a drive to work hard or harder.

Students who want to pursue their master’s degrees as their core strengths are found in research, teaching, and in academia are also affected by this ASUU strike.

These students are grounded in a place as secondary schools’ teachers and are being encouraged to learn tech skills that they do not see the need for, in the long run.

If you ask them, they still constantly feel their lives are stuck.

There are many other stories to this ASUU strike. It causes a lot of discomfort and mental stress for many, many students. But students have been encouraged not to lament, to keep quiet and learn our skills or work in silent pains of wishing our parents could afford to send us to private schools, to better schools or of wishing we weren’t even born in Nigeria at all.

However, lamenting does no good; it only cripples one’s potential and exposes one to a habit of constant wailing when we have the power to change the course of our lives for better and also to see unfortunate circumstances as blessings in disguise.

It is about time the Federal Government and ASUU sheathed their swords and resolve this protracted strike amicably.

If not, many students and potential university students may lose faith in Nigeria’s education system, and this will portend some crisis for the growth and development of the country.