ASUU strike actions have often been issued of major concern to students in public higher institutions where strike actions are prevalent. It is obvious that in Nigeria the attention paid to the educational sector is not as good as it ought to be and this has made a lot of lapses to exist in the educational sector. ASUU Strike actions take place for different reasons, it could have to do with demands from the government, it could have to do with the issues with the university administration. Sometimes it’s the academic staff of the university that go on strike, at other times it could be the non-academic staff embarking on strike, they could even all be involved in certain cases. It is important to consider the impact of ASUU strike actions on Nigerian universities.
The way strike actions are used as the major means of getting demands met in in Nigerian universities is a major concern because strike actions have serious impacts on the educational sector. Strike actions may be doing more harm than good in Nigerian universities and this is why it is important to consider the impacts, especially the negative impacts that these strike actions tend to have on the universities. It behooves the bodies involved to do all they can to reduce the rate of going on strike in universities so as to bring the impact level of this strike actions to the minimum.
Time extension
What ASUU strike actions have done over the years and will continue to do if not curbed, stopped or at least reduced to the minimum is that it will continue to increase the time span students are supposed to spend in schools. This will happen especially in a school where there may be incessant strikes. A student that is supposed to spend four years on a course, if he happens to go to a university where strike actions are prominent, may end up spending more than that. It is a waste of time. Students also have their own plans. This could even be somewhat worse in a school where the normal 4-year course is 5 years due to the fact that it’s a university of technology.
Temitope Salau, a 300-level student of Clinical Sciences at UNILAG said,” All of this time being wasted over nothing could have been used to learn a lot of things academically. Personally, I just resort to self-learning, even in topics that are novel to me.”
Unstable academic calendar
Another significant impact of ASUU strike on university is that it does not allow for a stable calendar system and when there’s no stable calendar system, it can negatively affect the smooth running and the administration of the university. In other words, it does not allow for stability of the university academic calendar.
Rushing of academic activities
Another significant impact of strike actions on universities is that the teaching and learning process and flow is negatively affected. This is in the sense that when students resume from strikes, the probability is there for the lecturers to have to make do with the time available to cover what they have to cover, and may not have proper time needed to take the students through for proper transfer of knowledge due to time lost to strike. Also, the school may want to roll out a timetable for examinations and this may be without considering whether students are properly prepared or not. This can have a bad effect on the performance of the students. The teaching and learning process will not be as effective as it ought to be.
Olayinka of the Chinese Language Department, UNILAG, said, “Upon resumption now, we might just begin to write exams on courses we haven’t even learned.”
More cost
One other significant impact that strike actions have, is that students may have to incur more costs in the process and consider the fact that the rent fee for the rooms or the self-contained rooms that these students are staying in is for a stipulated period of time. If the period elapses, then to continue staying there means the student will have to renew the rent. A student who has already paid for a year or for 6 months and then in the process, strike comes in and then no academic activity for a number of months while the rent fee is counting, by the time the rent expires the students will likely have to renew the rent and pay money even when academic activities for which reason he/she has rented the room or place has not been on.
