By Muyiwa Adekojede
It is not about Unilag not having the necessary technical capabilities to hold online lectures and exams for over 40,000 students,Or If CITs server won’t fail as usual. Or generally pif Nigeria is ready for E-Learning or not. It is about whose time is being wasted, It is about whose exam and test is been prolonged, It is about whose 4-years program are becoming a 6 to 7-year program.
I must say, I concur with ASUU. Although I have to be concise, we aren’t getting younger. And as such it is our own time that is being delayed. Not ASUU’s. Not FG’s.
With the number of victims rising every day in Nigeria caused by the pandemic. it very clear universities are nowhere nearresumption. Now, E-learning is here to aid months successfully spent without completion of academic sessions. It is to help put programs back on track with the academic calendar.
We have brothers and sisters who are recently graduate ‘unceremoniously’. They are at home eating and getting chubby, spending their supposed-serving year watching movies. Also, Students have spent over 18 weeks at home doing things that are not educationally-related. Literally, most of who are becoming Redundant.
We can stay back and say NO TO E-LEARNING. But in the real sense E-learning is almost at our doorstep, When Lecturers have submitted their lecture notes, When an online learning platform has been created,When we’ve even received data from network providers to begin online learning. What left?
I understand our complains about why there shouldn’t be a place for online learning. Nigeria is not near a technological advance state. And we(students) can’t afford data. Also online learning can’t be as convenient as classroom learning. But, With more than enough weeks gone and the academic session halfway done. Let us try to see the other side, the options it holds, how far it will take us, and how beneficial it will be.
