ASUU, SSANU and NASU Strikes and How University Alumni Are the Major but Unsuspected Victims

ASUU, SSANU and NASU Strikes and How University Alumni Are the Major but Unsuspected Victims

When any section of any school goes passive on their works, the students of such schools are the most noticed group of victims, and this is very normal; the students are the core of the jobs of the staff, so the core gets more attention. But in the case of a university being shut down for weeks because most of the unions of staff in the school are on strike, this would mean there are other victims different from the students; there are always traders and businesses affected, and the effects this always has on the alumni body of the universities are always these people get stuck and cannot move forward with their endeavours in life.

Let me start from the people who just wrote their final exams and are waiting to move on to the next stage of their lives but they are being kept waiting because the staff they need to do things like clearance, service mobilization and so on for them are on strike. I know how depressing this could be because I experienced this during my days of being a fresh graduate too; I had to wait for almost two years after writing my final exams before getting cleared for service, I couldn’t work because I had no document telling I’m a graduate, I couldn’t take up anything to learn because I was cautious I could make payments to learn something and the strikes get called off some days later, which would mean my money gets wasted as I would not be able to continue with such training. There are lots of fresh graduates being victims of this circumstance at this time, and they have nothing they can do about it, they can only wait and pray. If you ever wonder why fresh graduates get depressed easily, this is one of the reasons. This set of alumni is always overlooked in times like this, and this is bad.

Other set of alumni that suffer strikes but are rarely noticed are the old set of alumni who now want to go ahead in life and they need documents like their academic transcripts, Proof of Proficiency in English, verification of results and so on from their universities but the schools are on almost 100% shut down because every one is on strike, hence, these people cannot move forward with their life endeavours; people applying for postgraduate programmes outside the country and needing their documents from their previous local university can only hope the strikes are called off soon. The schools they are applying to aren’t on strike and their calendar would not wait on applicants whose documents can’t be made ready already because their previous schools are on strike. Employees who have been asked by their employers to provide their academic transcripts and have been given a deadline are not able to do that because their schools are on strike. This set of alumni are not one of the things that bother the government, but they should really be paid better attention to as this is a set of people who already have what to contribute to the economy or to the country somehow, but they cannot do that because they have been held down by the system.

It is understandable why unions would agitate and go on strike—especially in this our Nigeria, but schools management need to already develop some kind of mechanisms that would reduce the effects of these actions on the alumni body—especially when it comes to documents production, schools should never let anything whatsoever come in the ways of that. Schools management can contract independent bodies to keep the business of documents production going, or contract parts of their employees who are on strike to keep the documents production business going. We cannot keep shutting down the transcripts production system! This never and will never have any time it doesn’t try to ruin the lives of people who are promising to be of good benefits to Nigeria; even when a good-large part of them who are running abroad think they are escaping the country to never come back, they still end up being a good source of income to the country, so it’s never a loss for Nigeria. This system needs to do something about universities usually getting shut down, and it must also look deeper into avoiding any shut down ruining opportunities for alumni who are super ready to rise and shine.

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