By Chris X. Uwadoka
THE EFFICIENCY OF FAILURE
“An indisputable law of physics, water always finds the lowest level in an incredibly efficient manner. It penetrates any crevice or path that will facilitate its downward flow, steadily meandering and descending in search of lower planes. In our physical world, water is as efficient as gravity is unforgiving.
“Human beings are mostly water. The body is comprised of more than 70% water and it is always tragic when human beings, true to their chemical composition, emulate the efficiency of water during …, allowing one misstep or transgression to lead to lower and lower descent. Water can be beautiful to watch, as it cascades downward in its transparent and fluid simplicity, but some human beings also have a tendency to fall and sink, like water without the beauty.”
– Michael Bowe, Skyscraper of a Man
OVERCOMING THE TENDENCY TO ATROPHY
Like water, any system, left to itself tends towards atrophy. If, in the course of a journey, a man stands on the same spot on a highway for a year, the man would not only have failed to make progress; he would actually have retrogressed. Rivers necessarily flow downhill. Rivers do not flow uphill.
There’s a tiny exception, though, in the case of rivers like the Mississippi that flow towards the equator (http://onetuberadio.com/2014/11/07/why-the-mississippi-river-flows-uphill/). This single exemption represents hope. Were the centrifugal force of the earth’s rotation, which enables such rivers to actually flow against the force of gravity recreated in another system by use of technology or management, a similar exemption stands to be reproduced.
The Romans actually used technology to achieve a similar feat of moving water from a source lake or basin into Rome. They dug winding channels underground and created networks of water pipes to carry the water. “When the pipes had to span a valley, they built a siphon underground: a vast dip in the land that caused the water to drop so quickly it had enough momentum to make it uphill” (https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/la-ancient-rome1.htm).
In the early 1900s, when the population of Los Angeles in USA exploded so quickly, that the local water supply could no longer meet demand, the city replicated the water-delivery system of ancient Rome by constructing 90km of aqueduct. It comes down to clear intention, deliberate action and hard work.
ASUU USED TO MAKE RIVERS TO FLOW UPHILL
In the case of higher education in Nigeria, the Federal Government’s less than serious deliberate sustained action to lift higher education in recent decades led to an industry that, in a manner of speaking, grew six miles wide in size (quantity), but less than a sixth of an inch in depth (quality).
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) stepped in as a child of necessity. The Federal Government’s intransigence made it expedient for ASUU to adopt the roman strategy of digging “a vast dip in the land that caused the water to drop so quickly it had enough momentum to make it uphill.” The nerve-racking, gut-wrenching, long-lasting ASUU strikes of earlier years featured the gambit of a quick drop in public sympathy for ASUU, which nonetheless availed the union enough momentum to push the university system uphill.
ASUU’S LOST MOMENTUM
It does, however, appear that the drop in ASUU’s water channel is getting too deep for the resulting momentum to lift the water to higher ground and push it into the Rome of Nigeria’s socio-economic wellbeing. The goose that lays the golden egg is apparently being asphyxiated this time around.
ASUU’s good of yesterday is becoming the bad of today, and the horrible of history. Heraclitus is popular with his commonsensical saying, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” An ASUU, confronting a government in a COVID era with the same slash-and-burn strategies that worked for it in earlier years, is pretending to be the same man stepping into the same river twice.
AND ASUU CONTINUES TO GRAVITATE TOWARDS ITS LOWEST LEVEL
Records indicate that as ASUU grew stronger over the years, as it grew more powerful in its position vis-à-vis governments and university authorities, the professional and ethical conduct of higher education lecturers (particularly in public universities) appeared to worsen. News in public media about sorting, ‘sexually transmitted degrees’ and the like began to be more frequent, until they became commonplace.
‘ASUU Executive’ became a profession, exonerating the bearer from performing the very functions for which (s)he is employed. Otherwise highly trained academics (including professors) would feel no iota of guilt or remorse when they go through semesters without teaching, grading and supervising students – not because they are busy with research or community service, but simply because they can get away with it.
With the growing strength of ASUU came a relative weakening of the power of the employer to call ASUU executives and even members to order; and there’s no record of ASUU turning the heat on itself, regarding professional and ethical conduct; and ASUU’s water continues to find its lowest level, “steadily meandering and descending in search of lower planes.”
READ ALSO: https://www.thexpressng.com/2020/09/27/laycon-wins-2020-big-brother-naija-reality-show/
NOW, IS ASUU LIKE NERO, FIDDLING WHILE ROME BURNS?
The prolonged industrial action by university lecturers under the aegis of ASUU reminds one of the event of July of 64 A.D., in which a great fire ravaged Rome for six days, destroying 70 percent of the city and leaving half its population homeless. Unconfirmed accounts indicated that Rome’s emperor at the time, Nero, was enjoying himself, playing on a fiddle as his city burnt.
This is captured in the expression, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” The History channel (https://www.history.com), which disputes the veracity of the story explains nevertheless that the expression has a double meaning: Not only did Nero play music while his people suffered, but he was also an ineffectual leader in a time of crisis.
The question now is whether it will someday be said of ASUU leadership that like Nero, ASUU leadership is being ineffectual in a time of crisis. Truth be told, the impression is beginning to settle in the minds of students and parents that ASUU is playing Nero; that the union is thumbing its chest and reaffirming its determination to bloody the nose of the Federal Government while university students and their parents asphyxiate under its strike action coupled with COVID-19 and associated difficulties. One wouldn’t know if this is a product of disingenuous disinformation sponsored surreptitiously by opponents of ASUU in the negotiation game, or if it is just as things are – as glaring as rotten fish under the midday sun.
People, who should know, have voiced their opinions in private and in public that ASUU today is flogging a dying horse; it is flexing its muscle over a dying public university system. Though the impending death of the public university system is by a thousand cuts, the deepest of the cuts is apparently not from the poor funding of universities and meager take-home of lecturers.
Like the stab of Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus on his boss and confidant, Gaius Julius Ceaser, on the morning of 15th March, 44BC, the deepest stab on the university system is from the a trusted ASUU, which has unwittingly inflicted a culture of inferiority on the system by, inter alia, condoning – if not promoting – poor involvement of Nigerian universities in the search for social, economic, managerial and scientific solutions against the challenges of COVID-19.
ASUU has apparently failed to interpret the harsh COVID-19 era, as a time not to fight, but one in which to gain moral high ground by being seen to empathise with their students and to desire, above all else, to tirelessly promote research and cross-cultural dialogue on pandemics. The Good Book urges us to seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto us. It’s high time ASUU executive began to read the Good B youook for strategy, if not for content.
This article opened with a quote taken from Michael Bowe’s book, Skyscraper of a Man: “… some human beings also have a tendency to fall and sink, like water without the beauty (of water).” In closing, we ask, “Is ASUU inexorably falling, failing and sinking – with public universities strapped to its wings?”
Chris X. Uwadoka wrote from AE-FUNAI, Abakiliki, Ebonyi State.
