ASUU, idaamu Adamu and the Burston Rebellion (1)
The longest industrial action in history began in 1914. Officially, it never ended, the warring parties separated forever. Incidentally, it was also about education policies in England. A feeling of déjà vu? April 1 marks the 108th anniversary of the strike. The start date coincided with April Fool's Day, but the strikers weren't kidding despite being just 66 schoolchildren, protesting the sacking of their beloved teachers and mentors, who were incidentally a couple.
April Fool's Day started as early as 1564, and it was in France, not England. It was a forced cultural imposition, designed to make the inflexible seem foolish. Before that, April 1 was New Year's Day. When those responsible for the social order rearranged it, they had to force the hand of those who stuck to the original arrangement. They were called April Fool's Day and the mind game became a global phenomenon, now observed virtually across the globe.
But that was no laughing matter on that day in 1914 in Burston, Norfolk. Authorities overseeing the local school had just fired two teachers, Kitty and Tom Higdon. No, the fired teachers were not deemed subversive because of the stomach infrastructure, a political lexicon, coined by Mr. Ayodele Fayose as Governor to win the hearts of the Ekiti electorate. The dismissed couple demanded equality in qualitative education. They believed that English working class children should have a better education than was offered by the authorities. The struggle of the Higdons from that time against a repressive authority testifies that power and the authority that accompanies it have always been victims of abuse. This shows that men have also long since perfected the art of suppressing real change, even when they claim to be the administrators of change.
Exactly three months before Burston 66 and the Higdons entered the history book, another Englishman consummated an unrequired marriage in Nigeria. Sir Frederick Lugard on January 1, 1914 signed the Amalgamation Proclamation of 1914, which weeded out northern and southern Nigeria, in what was abinitio, a loveless marriage. One school of thought believed the arrangement was divine. I would have conceded, except that Lugard was an outspoken cultist, who pledged bloody oaths, to hold the queen's empire together in the parts of Africa where he served. The forced marriage aims to celebrate the 108th anniversary, as does the Burston strike. But, while the latter is in the history book as a forerunner of the successive struggles that brought English education to what it is today, where even local government councilors now seek to educate their children, directly or indirectly on our common-wealth bill, Nigeria, on the other hand, is in the history book as a country that never ceases to drain its best, into the cesspool of crime.
On February 14, university lecturers in Nigeria served what could pass for a somber Valentine's Day. Today, it has been six months and a week that federal universities have been closed. Yet there was no pandemic. Or maybe there are. The combination of a swashbuckling federal government, acting without the requisite sensitivity, and a bland university union, earning the label of one-way traffic, will likely pass for a pandemic to parents and students, who have been thrown into mental torture for the 25 weeks that the strike lasted. Or is the pandemic doing more than both sides are doing in their ego war? A typical semester usually lasts 12 weeks. Already, a session is lost for the interminable ram(ming) contest. But for both sides, this is just a continuation of what over the past few decades has become a defining feature of public university education, especially that under the direct supervision of central government.
Tragically, a sort of see-and-finish (trust that the barking of the enemy can do no harm) lies behind the federal government's overt bravado in its engagement with the striking speakers. The English Parliament also exhibited the aura of arrogance, when it passed the Education Bill of 1902, which gave working class children access to education. You would think that the men of authority have done them good, in the same way that the Minister of Education, AdamuAdamu, dances the buga while claiming that the government he serves has spent more than the lecturers demanded to properly fund the system. No, the passing of the bill was simply to give children the right to a sufficient education, to be marginally better than laborers in factories, fields, and domestic service. Christian educators like Tom and Kitty Higdon wouldn't have it. They believed that all children should have a better education than what many districts offered under the Education Act. They took up teaching posts in Aylsham, an agrarian area, in the Burston district, and began internal and external advocacy, to ensure that children would have a better education for better opportunities...
The longest industrial action in history began in 1914. Officially, it never ended, the warring parties separated forever. Incidentally, it was also about education policies in England. A feeling of déjà vu? April 1 marks the 108th anniversary of the strike. The start date coincided with April Fool's Day, but the strikers weren't kidding despite being just 66 schoolchildren, protesting the sacking of their beloved teachers and mentors, who were incidentally a couple.
April Fool's Day started as early as 1564, and it was in France, not England. It was a forced cultural imposition, designed to make the inflexible seem foolish. Before that, April 1 was New Year's Day. When those responsible for the social order rearranged it, they had to force the hand of those who stuck to the original arrangement. They were called April Fool's Day and the mind game became a global phenomenon, now observed virtually across the globe.
But that was no laughing matter on that day in 1914 in Burston, Norfolk. Authorities overseeing the local school had just fired two teachers, Kitty and Tom Higdon. No, the fired teachers were not deemed subversive because of the stomach infrastructure, a political lexicon, coined by Mr. Ayodele Fayose as Governor to win the hearts of the Ekiti electorate. The dismissed couple demanded equality in qualitative education. They believed that English working class children should have a better education than was offered by the authorities. The struggle of the Higdons from that time against a repressive authority testifies that power and the authority that accompanies it have always been victims of abuse. This shows that men have also long since perfected the art of suppressing real change, even when they claim to be the administrators of change.
Exactly three months before Burston 66 and the Higdons entered the history book, another Englishman consummated an unrequired marriage in Nigeria. Sir Frederick Lugard on January 1, 1914 signed the Amalgamation Proclamation of 1914, which weeded out northern and southern Nigeria, in what was abinitio, a loveless marriage. One school of thought believed the arrangement was divine. I would have conceded, except that Lugard was an outspoken cultist, who pledged bloody oaths, to hold the queen's empire together in the parts of Africa where he served. The forced marriage aims to celebrate the 108th anniversary, as does the Burston strike. But, while the latter is in the history book as a forerunner of the successive struggles that brought English education to what it is today, where even local government councilors now seek to educate their children, directly or indirectly on our common-wealth bill, Nigeria, on the other hand, is in the history book as a country that never ceases to drain its best, into the cesspool of crime.
On February 14, university lecturers in Nigeria served what could pass for a somber Valentine's Day. Today, it has been six months and a week that federal universities have been closed. Yet there was no pandemic. Or maybe there are. The combination of a swashbuckling federal government, acting without the requisite sensitivity, and a bland university union, earning the label of one-way traffic, will likely pass for a pandemic to parents and students, who have been thrown into mental torture for the 25 weeks that the strike lasted. Or is the pandemic doing more than both sides are doing in their ego war? A typical semester usually lasts 12 weeks. Already, a session is lost for the interminable ram(ming) contest. But for both sides, this is just a continuation of what over the past few decades has become a defining feature of public university education, especially that under the direct supervision of central government.
Tragically, a sort of see-and-finish (trust that the barking of the enemy can do no harm) lies behind the federal government's overt bravado in its engagement with the striking speakers. The English Parliament also exhibited the aura of arrogance, when it passed the Education Bill of 1902, which gave working class children access to education. You would think that the men of authority have done them good, in the same way that the Minister of Education, AdamuAdamu, dances the buga while claiming that the government he serves has spent more than the lecturers demanded to properly fund the system. No, the passing of the bill was simply to give children the right to a sufficient education, to be marginally better than laborers in factories, fields, and domestic service. Christian educators like Tom and Kitty Higdon wouldn't have it. They believed that all children should have a better education than what many districts offered under the Education Act. They took up teaching posts in Aylsham, an agrarian area, in the Burston district, and began internal and external advocacy, to ensure that children would have a better education for better opportunities...
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