Tuesday 6 August 2013

Strikes in the Education Sector: Need for Unity of Education Workers and Students in Struggle

Reports of ERC solidarity activities to back on-going ASUU strike
By Hassan Taiwo Soweto ERC National Coordinator.

Over the last three months, the education sector has been racked by one disruption after another. It is not even yet up to a week that Polytechnic lecturers under the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) suspended their 78 days strike over a promise from the government to address their demands. The strike, which was suspended with a threat of resumption if after a month it is not seen that government truly wants to meet their demands, rattled the government. Not just because of the determination of the Polytechnic lecturers but also because of the solidarity of polytechnic students.

Aside the efforts of groups like the ERC and the new group COSATEC, the National Association of Polytechnic Students (NAPS), despite the political limitation of its leadership, organised
a number of protests which helped to ply pressure on the government. Compared to this, NANS which is the umbrella body of all students publicly opposed the strike of University lecturers. The senseless arguments advanced by the rightwing NANS leaders for this counterproductive strategy is not worthy of examination here. What should worry ordinary students is that this attitude of the NANS leadership essentially means capitulation to the government and its neo-liberal policies of education underfunding. It means NANS is not only ready to fight neo-liberal education policies, it would also try its best to weaken the efforts of those fighting.

The ERC believes the demands of ASUU if met would genuinely lead to improvement in the education system and as such is worth supporting by students. Students suffer the most from cuts in education funding, fee hike and decaying facilities. Added to the woes of students is the phenomenon of unemployment which in practice means that only a few hundreds of the tens of thousands graduating yearly can ever find a job. 

NANS backing the government against a strike aimed at compelling the government to use Nigeria's enormous wealth to fund education is therefore essentially a betrayal of the interests of students. The best strategy that would enormously favour students interest is for NANS to openly solidarise with the University lecturers in their strike while also declaring nationwide mass actions of students to put forward specific students' demands for improved funding, reversal of hiked fees, repair of broken and decayed teaching and hostel infrastructures, restoration of banned unions, recall of victimised students activists etc. This kind of strategy which unifies students and education workers in collective struggle would have succeeded in putting enormous pressure on government such that the ultimate result would be that not only University workers but also students would win concessions at the end of the day.

It is such a unity in struggle of students and education workers that the ERC has been arguing for since the beginning of the strikes. Despite the opposition of the rightwing leaders of students and the atrophy of the mass organisations of students, we have managed over the last three months to launch solidarity activities to support the strikes in polytechnics and universities while also advancing students' specific demands. This consists of pasting of posters and handing out leaflets to students and the public. Also public meetings, symposium and rallies have been called. 

At the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Ile ife, ERC members have not allowed the fact the University is on break to discourage them. They have pasted posters and circulated leaflets. They are equally playing important roles in the on-going discussion among the "left" student groups on campus to organise public mass actions to fully back the strike. At the University of Ibadan (UI), the ERC was able to organise a successful public meeting which brought students and University lecturers to discuss how to jointly respond to the attacks on public education. Finally at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), we were able to organise a protest rally whose modest success is all the more surprising considering the over 10-year long absence of a students' union in the University and the conspiracy of the faculty presidents and the University Management in scaring students from attending the rally.

Below we present fascinating reports of these activities at UNILAG and UI which are just the first leg of the planned activities of the ERC to campaign for a united struggle to win the strike and defeat government anti-poor education policies.

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