There are Pawns and Instigators in every Strike and Protest.
Strikes and Protests can be used by a group of people as a tool to express public opinion, show displeasure about something that's going on, or show support for a cause. They can basically be used to force the hands of people who are in a position to make changes that would be favorable to those engaging in strikes or protests.
I remember when I theoretically studied strike actions and their use-case in society. This made me realize how powerful these things can be. I often asked myself if these could become something that people would adopt consistently. Like, once workers feel like they need more pay or a premium package from their employer, they can just go on strike and get what they want.
That's what I imagined but after having a series of real-life experiences of strike actions and protests, I have become more aware of what the society is about and why strike actions and public protests are not as effective as they are projected to be in textbooks. It gets worse when the main figures pushing for strike actions are just using the frontliners as puppets to get what they want.
I learned this the hard way when I was running a B.Sc University program in one of the few Federal Universities in Nigeria.
The school premises have a standby generator which they turn on every night from 7pm to 11pm so students can leverage that for night studies, charging their gadgets, ironing their clothes, and doing whatever they do with electricity. Getting that for just 4 hours a day is barely understandable. But we are already conditioned to think we don't deserve better. So, we accepted 4 hours of that each day.
You know how tolerance works, right?
Sometimes, when you tolerate ill-treatment, it gets worse over some time. That's exactly what happened. At some point, the school started defaulting in the time they supply light to students until we started going for days without any sign of a power supply. I'm sure you can already imagine the result of this action;
Students turned up to lecture halls with rumpled clothes.
Most people's electrical gadgets like phones, laptops, and rechargeable torches were very low on power.
This massively affected the water supply in the school premises.
This also made night readings impossible for students.
When students ran out of tolerance for what the school was putting them through, a protest kicked off all over the school premises. It happened on a Monday night from 7:30pm till the next 3 hours.
It was a protest done with a clear message; "we need electricity and water".
You know what happened the next day?
The protest had a huge backlash. The school used military men to kick students out of the school premises, locked up the 2 Campuses that were owned by the school, and went on an indefinite strike. This happened in 2015 during my freshman year and it was at the beginning of a new semester. We ended up spending 2 months at home until the school announced that students could return to campus.
It wasn't a simple; "get back to school". Instead, each student in the school had to face these consequences;
1. Each student must pay a reparation fee of #10,000 upon return. 10k in 2015 even for Nigerian currency was worth a lot.
2. Each student must present a court affidavit that says they won't engage in any protest again.
3. We had only 2 weeks before the semester's examination.
This means we only had a month of study for the entire semester and the most active lectures were only able to cover 25% of their syllabus for the semester. As you would expect, there were mass failures in that semester and a lot of students had carryovers.
Here's the mind-blowing part...
The total amount of what the school got from the 10k reparation fee was so spicy, they ended up pulling the same "no electricity" stunt the next year, instigated a protest amongst students, and repeated the same 10k reparation fee bullshit.
Yeah, I'm not even kidding.
That second time made it obvious that the school knew what they were doing whenever they did things that were geared towards making life unbearable for students. They are diabolical in that regard and they used that to make an awful lot of money while ruining the academic experience of students.
My point is, strikes and protests can be used as tools for good. But, in every strike and protest you see, look carefully to be sure the people engaging in it are not just pawns being used by some other person who's the true beneficiary of the chaos.
Nigerians can relate to the countless NLC and ASUU protests/strikes. If you think the frontliners are the instigators, then, you really haven't been paying attention.
Thanks For Not Missing Any Full-stop or Comma.
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Most of the time I have actually come to discover that the protest happening in Nigeria is not always generating positivity
Bro... I really understand the importance of protest. But I can't get over the fact that a lot of protests are cooked up by people who just want to use those that actually frontline the protests.
That was pure evil, the first and second time. #10,000 multiplied by all the students is a big cash out for them. Student wouldn't dare do anything again because it could be worse the third time.
True. Paying 10k for two years in a row as a reparation fee when nothing was really damaged is a diabolical move. This nonsense happened in UNN. Imagine a school as prestigious as UNN pulling that sort of stunt. Haha.
That's a big shame to the administration of the school at that time, confidently scammed students.
That's the sad reality of publicly expressing displeasure about the school administration for students in higher institutions.
The repercussion for that is always wild.
I have never heard of any worse case like the one you wrote about.
The Nigerian situation is just so pathetic
Nigeria is a country where people can not engage in a protest freely without having to pay for it and that is a sign that the government think they do all things right against the opinion of the masses.
The education has been messed up and turned into a cell of survival of the fittest. It is well
This is true. The problem is that this is getting transitioned into the new generation. When students get punished for engaging in peaceful protests, I don't see that as a good civil lesson for them to learn as they grow into the wider society.
That Asuu strike sent me back to my parents house, as I had to use my rent to pay for 3rd school fees that wasn't budgeted for.... All thanks to Asuu, we paid extra year school fees 😞.
Came in from #dreemport
Hahah... At some point, it became a popular saying that "people can't pass through Nigerian Universities without feel the hot reality check from ASUU".
These folks have been wild. Haha.