Lost Years: The Silent Theft of Students’ Tomorrows
This is the quiet frustration of thousands of students trapped in the cycle of ASUU strikes, a loop that delays dreams, crushes momentum, and leaves a generation suspended in academic limbo. In the stillness between strikes and resumptions, ambition begins to fade. Hope, once fierce and clear, starts to dim. Students find themselves mourning the loss of time, of moments that could have shaped their future. Mourning, in fact, the loss of something that hasn’t even arrived yet.
For many Nigerian students, university life is not just defined by lectures, exams, and graduation dreams, it is interrupted, distorted, and prolonged by a recurring nightmare, the ASUU strike. Over the past three decades, industrial action has become a predictable crisis in Nigeria’s public universities. The most tragic part? No one is surprised anymore. Generations of students have adjusted their lives around the instability, deferring ambitions and enduring psychological strain, all because the government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) cannot agree again. But on whose chest lies the blame? Each strike may seem like a pause, but collectively, they are eroding the very foundation of Nigeria’s educational future. This is not just a breakdown in communication; it is a systemic failure that sacrifices young lives in silence.
A look back through history reveals a trail marked by broken promises and unfulfilled agreements. Since its establishment in 1978, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has remained engaged in a protracted struggle with successive Nigerian governments over recurring concerns; adequate funding, staff welfare, university autonomy, and the revitalization of public tertiary education.
The landmark 2001 agreement between ASUU and the federal government was meant to address many of these concerns. It promised improved infrastructure, better salaries, and consistent investment in higher education. But that promise, like many others before and after it, was largely paper-bound and boundless promises that amount to rabbles. Each time a government signs a Memorandum of Understanding or Action, it delays implementation or abandons it entirely, forcing ASUU back into the trenches.
Between 1999 and 2023, ASUU has embarked on over 16 strike actions, with some lasting several months; the 2020 strike alone lasted 9 months, the longest in the union’s history. Behind each strike is a familiar pattern, negotiations, promises, delays, and eventual walkouts.
The result? Universities turn into ghost towns. Students are sent back home. Time is lost, not merely in weeks, but in years. And when the strikes finally end, the system resets as if nothing ever happened. The world moves on, indifferent to the time that has been stolen in plain sight. We may mourn for as long as we wish, yet the outcome remains unchanged. Disappointment.
At the heart of ASUU’s recurring strike lies a government that often appears uninterested in dialogue until public pressure mounts. Negotiations are frequently delayed, meetings postponed indefinitely, and key stakeholders absent when it matters most. When ASUU calls for engagement, the response is either silence or vague reassurances.
It’s not just about poor funding, it’s about a consistent lack of urgency. During the 2022 strike, for instance, it took months before the government invited ASUU back to the negotiation table. Even then, many meetings ended in deadlock or with proposals that recycled old, unfulfilled promises.
The Presidential Task Force on Education Revitalization, originally established to oversee the implementation of key agreements and reforms, has remained largely inactive, another symbol of the government’s inconsistent commitment to higher education. Promises of accountability and follow-through have repeatedly faded into bureaucratic silence.
Budgetary priorities further expose this neglect. Year after year, education continues to rank far below infrastructure, debt servicing, and political expenditure on the national scale. In the 2023 federal budget, a mere 5.3% was allocated to education, a figure that falls drastically short of UNESCO’s recommended benchmark of 15 to 20 percent. This chronic underfunding not only undermines the quality of learning and research but also signals a deeper national indifference to the role of education in development. A country that claims to invest in its youth cannot afford to treat education as an afterthought.
This persistent neglect sends a clear message to both students and lecturers: education is not a national priority. The consequences are evident, a disengaged government, a frustrated academic workforce, and millions of students trapped in the middle. Yet, in a troubling irony, the same government questions the attitudes of the youth, even as dropout rates continue to soar.
There’s no denying that ASUU’s fight is rooted in legitimate grievances, underfunded universities, poor infrastructure, unpaid allowances, and the systemic decay of Nigeria’s higher education. The demands are not unreasonable; they speak to the survival of public tertiary education. However, the union’s go-to weapon, indefinite strikes, has become a double-edged sword.
While ASUU frames strike actions as the last resort, it can be rightly said that they’ve become too frequent, predictable, and ultimately punishing to students rather than the state. We now have to question whether the union has exhausted its creativity or simply clings to outdated tactics that hurt its moral standing.
During the 2020–2022 cycles of industrial actions, what began as a struggle for revitalization soon turned into a prolonged standoff, with neither ASUU nor the government willing to blink. Meanwhile, students languished at home for months, and final-year students lost valuable job or scholarship opportunities. ASUU increasingly walks a tightrope: defending a noble cause while alienating the very public it seeks to protect. The question remains, can the union find new ways to pressure the state without repeatedly holding students hostage
Behind everyday strike action is a story untold of students suspended in academic uncertainty, dreams postponed, and mental health quietly deteriorating. The human cost of the ASUU strike isn’t measured in months lost alone, but in disrupted lives and disillusioned minds. For many students, a four-year course becomes a six- or seven-year journey not because of academic failure, but because the system they trusted keeps pausing. Internship deadlines are missed, scholarships are forfeited, foreign opportunities expire. Some are forced to start over elsewhere or abandon school entirely.
Worse still is the emotional toll, students battle anxiety, depression, and a crippling sense of hopelessness. Parents who struggle to fund their children's education now carry the added burden of uncertainty, watching their investments stretch with no definite end in sight.The strike is never just a headline, it’s the delay of graduation gowns, the long pause on ambition, and the fading of once vibrant academic zeal. For every extra month of silence on campuses, a generation of students sits in oblivion, asking When will learning resume and will it ever be stable again?
Despite countless strikes, negotiations, and media attention, the same cycle repeats itself. Promises are made, deadlines are missed, and students remain the collateral damage. Why does this keep happening? Because the system is not designed to heal, it's designed to manage a crisis, not prevent it.
If history has taught us anything, it’s that speeches certainly do not build lecture halls, and strikes alone won’t reform a failing system. We need to break the cycle, and both ASUU and the government must move beyond reactionary tactics and embrace structural, proactive reforms.
For ASUU, this means reassessing its strategy toolbox. While industrial action has its place, overreliance on it has diminished its impact. In simpler terms, they now see you coming. The union must explore legal advocacy, coalition-building with civil society, strategic media campaigns, and student-inclusive resistance.
The government, on its part, must stop treating negotiations like damage control and instead adopt long-term policy commitment. Education budgeting should reflect reality, not wishful projections. The political will to implement signed agreements, audit university finances, and depoliticize appointments in the sector must be present.
Our education crisis is not just a matter of protest, it's a matter of planning, priority, and accountability. Until both parties shift from defending positions to designing solutions, students will continue to pay the price for a system that promises much and delivers little.
In the battle between ASUU and the government, the true victims remain the students, trapped in a cycle they didn’t create, yet forced to endure. While leaders debate policies and sign forgettable agreements, young Nigerians lose time, momentum, and often, hope. So, who really owns the future? The answer should be the students but until the system prioritizes education over ego, and strategy over standoffs, the future will continue to be hijacked by the failures of the present.
It goes without saying that it is time for history to take a different course. The call to rescue our education system is urgent, it is no longer merely struggling; it is on the brink of collapse. We must act now, not out of obligation, but out of duty to the future
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