By: Kehinde Amusan
When you saw or read super striker, you probably thought of football forwards like Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo. No doubt, both are super strikers but not in the Nigerian context. Here, they are naive individuals with no or little striking experience.
There are several categories of a super striker, some of which, for clear reading and understanding, would be touched in the light of this guide.
The prominent ones are the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strikers. As a federal university teacher under the umbrella of ASUU, you must agree to go for the longest vacations on a yearly basis in Nigeria. At least, using nine months for long vacation and the other three months for academic business will improve the condition of service and revitalization of varsities.
The goal of quality education is no big deal, compared to becoming an ASUU super striker through long vacation from academic business. The more quality educational goals you can reach through striking, the more mentally revitalized you become as a teacher. To compensate Federal Government’s regular remuneration effort, research and write an academic paper on more ways to boycott academic business. Regular industrial action would be a good suggestion for that purpose. Demand things you know the Federal Government will decline to stall resumption from your long vacation.
The preeminent of the several categories of super strikers is the leadership striker. Interestingly, this category cuts across all social lives in Nigeria, starting with the least of the socialization agents – family – to the political life.
To become a super striker as the head of your family, begin by taking a long vacation, like a president, from your responsibilities. Seek personal care from foreign ladies, caring less about the woman at home. Close your financial borders, promote hardship at the expense of the people at home; while you ensure importing every item on your wish list is not a problem. Make hunger a nutritious daily food for everyone at home, while you feed yourself foreign delicacies. Neglect the relevance of education to your children’s future; after all, the few that desire and deserve quality education will not mind lavishing foreign currency. Ensure your daughters hawk, while your sons sit at home, learning the art of a super striker. How much goals you have met or scored depend on the count of those suggestions you have taken.
The long vacation you are fond of as a family head is a good threshold or reference to become a leading super striker in your work space, even as a political leader. It is true that charity begins at home. This means you already learnt the basics and advancing to other categories will not be a herculean task.
If you are a public high school teacher, whenever fatigue is telling you to rest, suggesting you give your lesson note to a student to fill in (it) for you, do not hesitate a bit. In fact, you need not attend classes to write or dictate note, your students are appropriate for such business. Also, you can sit in the staff room all day, attending your teaching responsibilities whenever you deem fit. Keep on striking, as a teacher, by summoning some students, during their long break or even lesson period, to pick beans, vegetables, peel melon and do other possible home chores for you in school.
If you are a public institution lecturer, take a long vacation from your teaching obligation, explaining it away using the mantra: “90% of all that students learn is outside the four walls of the classroom and 10% within those walls.” Such mentality would fill your opened monetary borders to money paid for the materials you sold for students to learn on their own, at home, without the lecturer’s insightful tutelage.
Another category of super striker is the varsity-student strikers. The basic quality you need to possess as a super striker in this category is the resilient spirit of unionism (aluta). This spirit is important to summon courage to firmly demand for immediate provision of educational ease and respect for student rights you were deprived of by the constituted authority.
In making your demands known, as student strikers, stage such protest as “No I.D Cards, No Exam; Power Outage and No Water Supply are Means to Failing Exams.” Such protests are most effective towards examination period, when you have been stressed mentally with academic rush. This will enable those that are common with exam sickness to rest and recover, while others that are healthy can as well tag along to mentally re-convalesce. In fact, you will even have more time to prepare for your exams, which will surely hit you immediately you resume school.
As a varsity student, staying at home for about a year or more will do you a lot of good rather than learning nothing about life in the classroom settings. Staying at home will provide you with more opportunities to experience the reality of life and of Nigeria. It is no news that problem-solving skills, required of a 21st century job seeker, are best learnt outside the four walls of the classroom. Such opportunity could fill your curriculum vitae with the skills and work experience needed to land you good jobs once you graduate. As a student, taking online courses at your convenience could temporarily substitute the physical classroom long hegemony. All this will not collapse quality education in Nigeria; it may only take a longer ride to becoming world class education.
