EDUCATION, HEALTH SECTORS AND THE UNENDING IMPUNITY OF THE RULING CLASS

 By Prof. Victor Ukaogo

The Health Sector has become the Scapegoat of Coronavirus. It would seem to many that before now the health workers did not worry much about the sector; they worried just for the many allowances that accrue to them. We may not know the details but from the outside it was like they merely worried about the disparity in their wages even as the unions within the sector battled against each other. We have not seen a concerted national action demanding tangible reforms of the health sector. Imagine patients buying syringes , surgical gloves etc in a hospital? To be given prescription drugs, only God knows!!

The competition and rivalries in the sector is legendary as nurses envy the doctors to the point of maligning them as incompetent and inefficient. The intra sector intrigues refuse to go even with the CMDs and consultants forming cabals to push their respective ideas in hospital management.

Of course as the squabbles grew, the general good of the sector suffered with no group championing or demanding for reform or facelift of the sector. Hazard allowances and sundry other personal demands dominate the airwaves hence the recurring strikes in the sector. The strikes were not for the general good of the sector because these strikes were either sectional or factional; all to the good of their oppressors.

But thanks to Covid 19. The pandemic finally gingered nurses and other health workers in Parklane Enugu to protest for their ill preparedness for covid 19. They spoke in one voice at least for once in what appeared to be for their own good or survival. No sector of the society  can develop optimally without government intervention with  substantial resources in that sector. At least,  Covid 19 has exposed our inadequacies in the Health sector which is a product of negligence and wickedness. Maybe health workers should pursue the progressive development of the sector by restrategizing; who knows if the government will do something. 

But the government invitation extended to chinese doctors recently appeared to many as the grand funeral for the  ailing health sector.  Imagine Nigeria, a super exporter of health entrepreneurs to all corners of the world being roundly humiliated by technocrats in government!! Well, it is not in doubt that whatever happens after covid 19 will surely be a case study for research.

 The decay in the health sector is in no way an accident.  Indeed the sector is not the only sector assailed by the vicissitudes of failed governance. It manifests as a clearly orchestrated wickedness by the rich to dispatch the poor to their early graves. But have they not become victims of their own wickedness?

It might be difficult to argue that the health sector is not like the Education sector. For indeed they appear quite similar with few contrasts. As medical tourism booms in the land so has education pilgrimage prospered. Imagine how Nigerian students fill mushroom Ghanaian private universities paying in dollars!! Imagine a 4 year degree course in Nigeria is offered for a mere six months with certificates according to reports in Benin Republic? Parents that complain of 30k school fees in Nigeria happily pay thousands of dollars across Seme border for their children. Interestingly, in those universities in Ghana and Benin Republic, Nigerian professors and lecturers service them in full. So the death of public schools is the happiness of proprietors of private universities. The consequence of public school failure is the shipping of  their children abroad. Yes, anywhere outside Nigeria.  But in this era of pandemic, how far did they go in medical tourism or academic pilgrimage? Covid 19 should be congratulated for exposing the health sector and the education  sector. Indeed, but for the pandemic, the shenanigans in the health sector would not have been exposed as high profile health clinics couldn't manage what doctors in tents did to discharge a pool of recovered covid 19 victims. And for t

he parents that are  willing to ship out their wards at a short notice, they failed woefully in their enterprise.  And today, the lockdown has indeed locked the big and the small.

I am not in any position  to attest to the reality or otherwise that there is an unseen deity or what appears as one compelling government not do any good to its citizens without struggle. ASUU wrestled the government to the ground to extract TETFUND from them and this intervention agency is today the only remaining hope for  the University system in Nigeria.

It is true that lecturers are being starved and blackmailed by successive regimes, but ASUU is resolute with principles; it is the only union the government  can never break no matter the antics or arsenal deployed. Teachers are resolute in demanding for proper funding of the universities not the increment in salaries as being bandied about by beneficiaries of the rot in the sector.

ASUU is the only union in the world whose members will go hungry instead of compromising. This 3 months salary seizure in this period of ruthless  pandemic  must have shocked the presidency along with their advisers as the union remain poised to salvage the Education  sector from the fangs and jaws of the rich for the benefit of the poor.

The destruction of public schools will be good business for private universities and their owners.  For parents that side the oppressors, the failure of ASUU in in his current face off will determine finally the fate of this generation. If the health sector is comfortable with the ruin and decay, all well and good but for us in knowledge industry, they must contend with teachers to the end. I sometimes wonder if madam minister and her allies in the punishment of University teachers were living in Nigeria or in the moon when this same ASUU wrestled repeatedly with military apologists in the 80s and 90s or even as late as 2013. If Military regimes didn't silence nor defeat ASUU, this rudderless civil contraption can do even less to the union.

It's unfortunate that whenever and wherever technocrats perpetrate impunity, everybody will quickly direct their anger  against President Buhari. Now the seizure of 3 months salary and the refusal of the Accountant  General to obey the presidential directive to pay the teachers over a week after is most instructive.  But like Dr David Wayas said 'History will surely remember ASUU for standing  alone for the truth,  by the truth and nothing less'. It is in the DNA of ASUU to show the light, let us not fail in this self appointed  task because victory is already in sight.

Be blessed.