FOR
AN EFFECTIVE STRUGGLE AGAINST ANTI-POOR EDUCATION POLICIES
·
Revive
the Students' Movement!
Solidarity
Message to a Students Retreat organized by CEPED and ACIS to commemorate the
10th anniversary of the death of Comrade Chima Ubani holding on Monday
21st September 2015 at the Bayero University Kano (BUK).
The Education Rights Campaign (ERC)
urges all students' leaders and activists on the imperative of reviving the
students' movement on an agenda of struggle and solidarity. We make this
clarion call for two major reasons:
(1) SOARING COST OF EDUCATION
Public education is being priced out of
the reach of children of the working class and poor. In most public tertiary institutions, fees
are as high as N30, 000, N60, 000, N100, 000 and above while the minimum wage
is N18, 000! With such high tuition, quality education has effectively become
the preserve of the few rich.
10.5 million children of school-going
age are out of school in Nigeria. This the highest figure of out-of-school
children in the world. As UNESCO revealed early in the year through its EFA GMR
Report, the gap between the poor and the average in Nigeria has increased with
the number of children from the poorest households going to primary school
falling from 35 per cent to 25 per cent in 2013. Also completion rate is very
low. Unlike in the past when starkly illiterate parents stood the chance of
having literate children as a result of government subsidization of education
and mass enrollment of pupils, today literate parents stand the chance of
having starkly illiterate or poorly educated children. This is because of the
twin policies of underfunding and commercialization both of which places the
heavy burden of funding education on parents. Very few parents can afford the
cost of sponsoring their children to complete their education from primary to
tertiary levels. Infact, statistics shows that very few students makes the
transition from primary to secondary school and then to a tertiary institution.
There is a high drop-out rate. The result is a growing illiterate (or poorly
educated) adult population. According to UNESCO, half of Nigerian adults (51
per cent) are illiterate! Every Nigerian student must be livid with anger at
this tragedy an unfortunate paradox of a country rated as the biggest economy
on the continent and top crude oil exporter.
(2) POOR QUALITY OF EDUCATION AND DECAYING
INFRASTRUCTURE:
Soaring cost is one thing, the value or
quality of education is another. The tragedy of the Nigeria situation is that
even for those who manage to afford the soaring costs, there is no guarantee
they would receive any reasonably quality education. As one-time NUC Executive
Secretary and one of the leading proponents of the neo-liberal education
policies that have destroyed our education sector, Prof. Peter Okebukola, once
revealed, Nigerian graduates are unemployable! “Nigeria has one of the worst
education systems in the world” so
concluded Kate Redman, the UNESCO's Communications and Advocacy Specialist on
EFA GMR after assessing Nigeria's education sector over the last 15 years.
We may not like these conclusions, but
they are true! Nigeria's education sector is a disaster. For instance, in
virtually all the public tertiary institutions in the country, teaching and
hostel facilities are inadequate, over-crowded and decaying. Many laboratories
and libraries are denuded of vital provisions. The school environment is
in-conducive for learning, classrooms are often overcrowded and students are
made to live like animals in the habitually congested hostels while the working
condition of staff is abysmal. Nearly a million students apply for admission
annually, all of the countries public tertiary institutions can barely admit
half of this number. Despite Nigeria's GNP per capita growing substantially
from 1999 till now, investment in education has remained low. While the
population of school-age children has increased over the last three decades,
government investment in education has failed to match this increase.
HOW
DID THINGS GET SO BAD?
As Nigerian students, we must be angry
at this tragic situation and resolve to combat it. However this means we have
to first and foremost rebuild our movement - the students' movement. Actually,
it is the weakness of the students' movement as well as the labour movement
that has allowed government to destroy public education up to this extent. Were
the students' movement to be as strong as in the past, successive government
would not have easily gotten away with their anti-poor education policies.
Historically, Nigerian students under
the umbrella of the National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS) and the National
Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) had in the past waged gigantic
struggles against all forms of anti-poor policies of various governments. It is
on record that students led the struggles against the Anglo-Nigeria Defence
pact under the Tafawa Balewa capitalist government in 1962. Nationwide mass
protests like the 1978 “Ali must go”, 1984 anti-privatization and
commercialization of education and 1989 anti-SAP struggles, among others by
Nigerian students cannot be easily forgotten.
What is the difference between now and
then? The basic difference is that in the 70s and 80s, the students' movement
was ideologically-driven. One of the factors responsible of course was the
ideological attraction of the then Stalinist Soviet Union and other deformed
workers state which despite their totalitarianism offered to African youth
alternative ideas to capitalism. Even though only a few could be called socialists
or Marxists in the true sense of the word, nevertheless several student
activists and leaders were stoutly opposed to capitalism and imperialism which
they correctly saw as the cause of the crisis of education underfunding and
commercialization as well as the condition of mass poverty in the midst of
abundance. Compared to today's NANS and students unions whose leaders profess
no clear ideology, the active layers in the students' movement in the 70s and
80s embraced clear ideological positions that sought to fight for the
improvement in the education sector and the Nigerian society as a whole. As
such, NANS adopted a CHARTER OF DEMAND at its 3rd Annual Convention 1982 at the
Bayero University Kano (BUK) which not only sought for improved funding of education
but also expressed solidarity to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.
Today, nobody knows what NANS is
fighting for as the association has no Charter of Demand. A new government has
been inaugurated since May 29 2015 and despite the immense hardship students
suffer yet there is no list of demands of Nigerian students before the
government. To make matters worse, several Students' Unions across the country
have leaderships that are not fundamentally different from the NANS leaders,
sometimes even worse, and that regularly fails to use their authority as NANS
Senators to compel the NANS leadership to defend students' interests. This has
got to change. The power to change this situation and revive the students'
movement lies with the mass of students and activists. Helping the rank and
file students to realize this power which they do not yet realize they have
should be the focus of any strategy to revive the students' movement.
WHAT
TO DO
The ERC believes that reviving the
students' movement is a process, not a one-off attempt. Also any effort to
revive the students' movement has to start from below (i.e. among the rank and
file students and activists) as very little could be achieved with a top-down
approach. We therefore outline three key steps below:
(1) To
begin to revive the students' movement, the ideology of struggle and resistance
has to be returned to the campuses. This means socialist and left-leaning
organizations that used to be prevalent on campuses in the past must be
restored. To achieve this, we must campaign to free the campuses from tyranny
and in accordance with the 1982 NANS CHARTER OF DEMAND, fight for “the right of
students to form associations, clubs and organizations without interference
whether by way of registration, recognition or in whatever form”. Given the
history of cultism and to take care of the genuine concern this has created,
this demand should now read “the right of students to form associations, clubs
and organizations without interference by way of registration, recognition or
in whatever form, so long as they do not use violence to achieve their
objectives”. Today and on a very few campuses, only a few left-leaning or
ideological organizations exist. As a result, neo-liberal ideas have a free run
on campuses which in turn shapes the consciousness of turns. To challenge this,
progressive unions like the Academic Staff Unions of Universities (ASUU) and
other organizations must map out a programme to flood the campuses with books
and materials that teaches alternative ideas to capitalism. This should however
be linked to regular programmes like symposium, rallies, ideological workshops
etc.
(2) Secondly,
there is a need for a programme of struggle. This should involve drawing up a
CHARTER OF DEMAND that aggregates demands that addresses the crisis Nigerian
students and the education sector faces. Together with this, there should be a
call for a one-day nationwide lecture boycott and mass protests as a starting
point of a campaign to compel government to implement the charter. This charter
of demand and call for lecture boycott should be both a programme for
implementation through an independent campaign of activists and progressive
unions as well as a slogan to challenge the NANS leadership to action. It is our
view in the ERC that there can be no serious revival in the students' movement
without a programme of struggle anchored on a clear plan for implementation and
that aims to challenge to action all those who lay claim to the leadership of
the students' movement.
(3) Thirdly
there is need for a concerted and sustained campaign to democratize the
students unions and reclaim NANS from careerists. We call for a campaign that
will involve posters, leaflets, regular symposium etc and not just episodic
ambitions to reclaim NANS through contesting in elections. Of course where
opportunities exist to retake NANS through elections, that opportunity must be
taken. However with the undemocratic way NANS is being run and the role the
State is playing, there is little hope for now that a genuine and fighting
leadership can emerge electorally. Meanwhile, a major reason why NANS does not
truly represent the genuine interests of students is because most leaders of
many Students Unions are rightwing, pro-state and not reflective of the mood
and genuine interests of their members. Without rebuilding the students
movement from below and reclaiming the unions, very little can be achieved.
Therefore alongside restoring ideological organizations on campuses and having
a programme of struggle, a campaign is needed on every campuses to fight for
the following objectives:
a) Democratization of unions with a
politically and financially accountable leadership
b)
For mass-based Students Unionism. This means a union that regularly
organizes congresses to ensure students are involved in all decisions and
activities of the leadership.
c)
Break the state's hold on the students' movement. For a fully
independent Students' Unionism. This means the practice of union leaders
getting instructions from the DSA must be stopped. So also is the idea of
school administration meddling in and organizing students' union elections.
Also the idea of NANS leaders seeking approval from the DSS or the Police
before they can organize a protest or take an action must be stopped.
d)
For Unions and NANS to be funded through students dues. For unions to
begin to fulfill their constitutional obligations of paying capitation dues to
NANS and in turn demand regular financial report and audit as prescribed in the
constitution.
e)
Return NANS to the campuses! All
NANS activities including Senate meetings and conventions to be held on
campuses.
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