REVEALED: What Nigerian Polytechnic Students Are Doing To Survive As ASUP Strike Continues

Having stayed at home for more than six months due to the unending industrial action by the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics, ASUP, students of Nigerian polytechnics have expressed their frustrations.

Despite the various protests organised by student unions and other bodies to ensure that an end is brought to the ongoing ASUP strike, no progress seems to have been recorded.

While lamenting their ordeals, Nigerian polytechnic students opined that the Federal Government has kept a deaf ear to the pleas of the lecturers, thereby leaving them to bear the brunt of the ongoing strike action.

According to Olowu Emmanuel, a second year student of Higher National Diploma at the Federal Polytechnic in Ado-Ekiti, the students are tired of sitting at home while the strike continues.

 * Polytechnic students during one of their protests over ASUP strike in Lagos

 "In all honesty, I just wish the strike could be called off immediately because I am really tired of staying at home.

"I am supposed to be looking forward to graduation now but the federal government has made us sit at home doing nothing.

 “It is a shame but that is what we are being made to bear in this country," Emmanuel said.

In her submission, Adeyemo Bose, who is studying accountancy at the same institution, stated that, "if I had a choice, I would have returned to school because I have had to stay indoors all these while.

“It's frustrating, I tell you.” Apart from the fact that the polytechnic students are tired of staying at home, some of them have taken to different vocations in order to get themselves busy.

One of such students is Oshilaja Olatunji , a Business Administration student of Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, MAPOLY, in Ogun State.

"Initially, our school did not join the industrial action because we had to pull out because of reasons known to the school authorities.

But since we joined the strike, I have been doing justice to my photography business because I cannot continue staying idle at home when I can make money through my petty business.

"We are appealing to the FG to reach an agreement with ASUP concerning their demands because it is in the interests of the students. Things are really getting out of hands," he stated.

Also, after initially pulling out of the strike action, Nigeria's premier polytechnic, Yaba College of Technology, YABATECH has joined the strike in what they said was ‘in solidarity with ASUP national body’.

This move irked their students as they staged a protest on the streets of Lagos recently to express their grievances.

One of the students of the institution, Feyisola Olufemi, noted that it is 'killing' to imagine that time they would have spent to do productive things on campus are being spent doing virtually nothing at home.

She stated further that, "staying at home makes us (students) more vulnerable to social vices than when we are in school.

“I just hope that the Federal Government will realize this and reach a truce with the striking lecturers in time. "They should stop destroying our future with these unnecessary strikes".

Not only do some of the students want to return to their classrooms, some of them claim they are being denied a chance to progress their academic pursuits because their results are either yet to be processed or waiting to be certified and released.

A National Diploma graduate student in Computer Science from the Federal Polytechnic, Bida, Adekunle Adeola, said she has been rendered redundant at home because she is yet to get her result due to the ongoing strike action.

"Without my results, there has been little or nothing that I have been able to do since the strike commenced. I have been virtually rendered useless with the delay. "There has to be something that can be done about the strike unless students would get worse, not even with the elections coming up next year," a disappointed Adekunle lamented.

The National body of the students, National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, has also thrown its weight behind the students' plight.

The body recently demanded the immediate sack of the supervising Minister for Education, Nyesom Wike.

According to the Lagos State co-ordinator of NANS, Yaqub Eleto, "we are stating clearly that Wike should be sacked on the grounds that he has disappointed Nigerian students.

"He is supposed to champion the students' case before the presidency but he has not produced any meaningful result.”

Source: Legit.ng