I doubt if anyone with a modicum of conscience or education can give thumbs up to the government of Kogi State. The state especially under the current administration has consistently showed its incompetence – how grossly incapable it is to effect any worthwhile deliverables. In fact, I’m constrained to submit that it does not possess the conscience to get embarrassed even if the entire institutions in the state closed down throughout this sad, ignoble and unhappy regime.
They do not appear to possess enough dose of honour to process the implications of our collective disaffection and agitations. I stopped writing about them a long time ago because they won’t be around forever, will they?
I will forgive Bello and his gang a thousand times, than accept the debasement of our scholarship. I often can’t easily let go each time any member of this community regales in unscholarly indulgences.
The tens of thousands of students who have taken a position over the protracted strike in the state’s tertiary institutions have been demonized in the most unfair and undignified manner.
What the older generation owes this demographic is an honest, a humble (not condescending) and consistent analysis, education and engagement. I think it’s important that our university teachers be reminded how strategic their profession is to the development of an informed and tolerant society. And it cannot be achieved through the paternalistic approach which unfortunately pervades the Nigerian campus space.
You see, scholarship got badly injured the moment our academics became too intolerant to opposing views. The arrogance that made transparency become a matter of convenience, is no less a trouble for progressive thoughts.
College teachers now have a feeling that they owe no one any explanation for actions or decisions they take – much less the students (the very reason for their engagement/employment). It is on record that historic movements began on college campuses – probably by young and inexperienced people – which presupposes that the concept of tolerance, free speech and an operationalized understanding of education were in force.
Evidently, Kogi State University chapter of Academic Staff Union of Universities (KSU-ASUU) does not deem it a matter of obligation to reach out to its internal and external publics particularly its students and their parents. Sadly still, pro – ASUU sentiments on various media platforms would rather decry the misguidedness of ‘our youth’ than engage with relevant information.
Teacher – student mutually respectful engagement is neither a concession nor condescension. It is a duty. And if you believe they don’t have sufficient intelligence to understand, perhaps it is time to interrogate what they are being taught.
We must fix this.
– Oshaloto, Joseph Tade,
Ibadan, Oyo state
