Copyright

Gregory Obinna Ugbo; Henry Chigozie Duru;

Published On

2025-01-06

Page Range

pp. 263–286

Language

  • English

Print Length

24 pages

9. The Lone Voice in the Academic Wildernes

Nigerian Academics’ Experiences in Industrial Conflicts

Chapter of: Being in Shadow and Light: Academics in Post/Conflict Higher Education(pp. 263–286)
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.

Contributors

Gregory Obinna Ugbo

(author)
Lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication at Federal University Oye Ekiti
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6088-9794

Gregory Obinna Ugbo lectures in the Department of Mass Communication at Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria. He is an avid researcher with specific interests in journalism and media studies, conflict communication, health communication, and gender studies. He is a member of several academic associations including the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), the African Council for Communication Education (ACCE) and the Association of Communication Scholars and Practitioners of Nigeria (ACSPN).

Henry Chigozie Duru

(author)
Department of Mass Communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University

Henry Chigozie Duru currently teaches at the Department of Mass Communication, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, after having been active in the field as a full-time journalist. He holds a doctorate in Mass Communication with a specialisation in Political Communication and Journalism.