THE Lagos State University (LASU) has been embroiled in crisis for over three months now. The students are at home as a result of their lecturers strike to force government to implement a 53% salary increase agreed upon during ASUU’s prolonged strike last year.
Apart from this, some of the radical lecturers are also insisting on government sacking of their Vice Chancellor, who has been accused of so many “misdemeanours”, including running a second term in a university that has a one term tradition.
It is, however, very unfortunate that Gov. Babatunde Fashola, who is also visitor to the university allowed matters to degenerate to such ugly length due to his non-challance and complete disregard for public tertiary education in Lagos State.
The LASU snub started about a decade ago when the Lagos State Government completely abandoned LASU to its fate. And today it is another great testimony to Nigerian corruption that Lagos State University has not been de-listed from Nigeria universities. It is true that the tertiary education regulatory body – the National Universities Commission has de-accredited several courses in LASU but has shied away from closing it down completely to allow Lagos State Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) carry out corrective surgery on the comatose University.
Lagos State University as of today is like a glorified secondary in a 17th century setting. The grandeur, ivory towerness and charm of modern universities are absent in LASU. I do not know of any secondary school (even a Lagos State public secondary school) that can compare with LASU’s decadence and rot. While Lagos State public schools have doors and louvers, these components are a rarity in LASU.
The door ways have no doors, the windows have no louvers. The rustic and perilously hanging ceiling fans have not worked for over a decade. The environmental stench drifting even into the classrooms is overpowering. Lecturers offices are not much better than the afore described classrooms.
To compound matters for both students and lecturers, beggars of various shapes and sizes have made LASU classrooms and lecturers’ offices havens for improved daily revenues. This can be very shocking information to other undergraduates but Great Lasuites” have taken this aberration in their strides.
Remuneration and welfare packages for LASU lecturers are better kept secret to prevent the hearer suffering a breakdown. What do we expect from a university where a professor of 20 years standing gets just about N293,000.00 monthly, including allowances while his counterparts in other universities (mostly Federal universities) get well over N600,000 monthly from an initial N520,000 monthly pay.
So where does the LASU lecturer derive his drive and enthusiasm for work from. Ask LASU lecturers and workers, there is neither drive nor enthusiasm to propel workers to strive for excellence in a state that lays claim to excellence in all spheres of endeavour.
LASU lecturers should unite with their Vice Chancellor to present a combined strength to challenge government’s unwillingness to invest in infrastructural improvement of the school. The VC too is helpless in the face of the Governor’s intransigence and unwillingness to modernise facilities on campus. That no LASU VC has completed a second term is not compelling enough reason to sack a VC whose hands are tied by government unwillingness to develop tertiary education in the state.
It is highly regrettable and unfortunate that Gov. Fashola is heeding the advice of his conservative political godfathers whose private universities’ admissions will swell as a result of the LASU crisis or any crisis in the public University system.
It is unbelievably shocking to note that Gov. Fashola who is a 1987 Law graduate from the University of Benin, a Nigerian university, can be so impervious and insensitive to global appeals to see reason to reopen this gloried secondary school called university.
Most observers jubilated when Fashola became governor because most of us identified him as our “own home grown” who knew the problems of our universities rather than some who imported their degrees through an address in Oluwole area of Lagos Island.
Today, Gov. Fashola could have had a fantastic curriculum vitae which has been badly rubbished by his unwillingness to solve a very simple crisis which needs only a WILL to solve. This inscrutable stance is understandable when we realise that in Nigeria today, nearly every governor or the wife has a university or is directly or remotely connected to the proprietorship of private universities. And so for the private universities to grow, the public universities must be unfunded to create an atmosphere of confusion and indefinite strikes.
Nigerian leaders are not well educated on the intrinsic value of education for the total development of its citizenry and economy. Education is the only lifetime you can throw at a drowning man to rescue him. It is the only social fabric and infrastructure that can guarantee an assured tomorrow.
President J.F. Kennedy of America once said: “Our progress as a nation cannot be swifter than our progress as a nation”. That is, education is the bedrock and surest index for development in the American society. That is why Harvard, Yale and Massachusetts Institution of Technology have overtaken British universities in global rankings.
Horace Mann a great philosopher postulates that “a human being is not in any sense a human being, till he is educated”.
Henry Peter Broughman says further: “Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive, easy to govern but impossible to enslave”. But it was the great and famous Greek Philosopher – Aristotle who hit the nail on the head. He said: “Educated men (and women) are as superior to uneducated men (and women), as the living are to the dead”.
So of what economic benefit are millions of “living dead men” to Lagos State. Today Lagos State is the world’s capital of Area Boys.
In fact, the Lagos State government has now recognised Area Boys and given them uniforms of many colours, starting from the congenitally corrupt LASTMA officials to the crude and undisciplined KAI officials whose modus operandi outdates Shakespearean times and the Governor is aware of all these.
Governor Fashola should move his priority from roads and housing to education because it is the only enduring legacy that will outlast our roads and houses. I have seen wonderfully adorned roads and boulevards but truly they do not last, just like the Chinese constructed culvert along LASU-Iyana Iba Road which collapsed just after construction.
True, Lagos indigenes and elders should prevail on Babatunde Fashola to leave an enviable record on education that will transform the image and economic strength of the presently average state to one of the greatest economies in the world. After all, California is the world’s fourth largest economy in spite of the fact that it is a dependent state within America.
Lagos State can be like California if we make education our priority. Gov. Fashola can do this by unconditionally reopening all closed tertiary institutions in Lagos State and investing heavily on education.
Mr. ABIMBOLA THOMAS, a commentator on national issues, writes from Lagos.
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