9. The Lone Voice in the Academic Wildernes

Conflicts undermine and confront quality teaching and learning in universities. This chapter explores related discourses emerging from industrial conflicts in the Nigerian Higher Education System and, particularly, its public universities. These have arisen from unmet needs situated in a context of structural and economic conflicts between public universities, expressed by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), and the Nigerian Federal Government. Newspaper reports were reviewed from January to October 2022 to ascertain how the government, media, and other stakeholders understand and represent the underlying causes of the conflict espoused by the academic union. The outcome of this curation contributes a Nigerian perspective to the cognate lived experiences of many university academics internationally who are increasingly entrapped and victimized in vicious webs of conspiracies and silences.