Locked Down during the Lockdown

Abstract

While the pandemic came with the lockdown that was observed as a measure to curtail the spread of the COVID-19 disease, public Universities in Nigeria were under another kind of lockdown. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in Nigeria was on a nationwide strike with strict enforcement of compliance to no teaching and other academic activities in every member university. Since academic activities were on a halt, did that mean academics had no academic engagement? Not exactly; different individuals engaged in activities that had academic bias, utilising digital and non-digital tools. This paper looks at how the pandemic shaped these different academic activities within the Nigerian academic circles, as well as the availability and affordability of the digital infrastructure needed for Internet-driven engagement for Nigerian academics. The paper is based on oral conversations with academics from different Nigerian Universities—federal, state and private; as well as on digitally driven questionnaire. The findings show that out of the 1000 academics who was reached through electronic means like email and WhatsApp, using Google form 27 responded and returned the questionnaire on the given deadline. The respondents engaged in various academic activities with writing, research and conference attendance on Zoom virtual meeting app taking the lead. Provisions for conference attendance online was catered for by mostly individual respondents.

By March 2020, the global outlook regarding COVID-19 had already become gloomy and anxious. The pandemic had forced the World Health Organization to declare a global health emergency (Dhawan, 2020). Nigeria, like many other countries across the globe, went into its first lockdown after cases of the infection and a few deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic were reported. Although the global educational sector migrated to distance and online learning alternatives, Nigerian public universities (universities owned by Nigerian federal and state governments) were dealing with another type of lockdown. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in Nigeria was on a nationwide strike with strict enforcement of compliance to no teaching or participation in any other academic activities by university lecturers at every member university.

The indefinite strike by ASUU was inevitable, stemming from a series of disagreements between the federal government and the union over unpaid salaries and allowances, as well as ASUU members' refusal to enroll in the Integrated Payroll and Personal Information System (IPPIS), among other issues (Uchechukwuand Ogundare, 2020).The strike continued until the end of December 2020, when it was provisionally suspended after the ASUU national chairman, Professor Abiodun Ogunyemi, announced that "the union would return to strike without notice if the government reneges in meeting its part of the agreement reached with the university lecturers" (Yahaya, 2020).Going by the statistics provided by Suleiman Bogoro, the executive secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), 94 percent of Nigerian students are in public tertiary institutions. In effect, nearly all the tertiary student population were at home as academic activities in Nigerian public universities had come to a halt (Agbola 2019).

The educational system in Nigeria, like the general polity, was already in appalling condition, showing that the tertiary education sector was already confronting severe challenges. The need for immediate action to mitigate the adverse impact of the pandemic was necessary. Moreover, only a paltry 4.3 percent of youth are enrolled in tertiary university education when compared to countries like Chile (37.5 percent), Singapore (33.7 percent), Malaysia (28.2 percent), and Brazil (16.5 percent; Ezekwesili 2013). This, and the falling standards of education in Nigeria, necessitated that the system be redeemed, but that was not to be. As the strike lingered, many university lecturers found ways to continue with their scholarly work and knowledge production activities, relevant for the global educational ecosystem.

In this article, we reflect on if and how academics in the Nigerian higher education system engaged in their academic work during the lockdown and the challenges they experienced attempting to engage in this work. Our reflections are based on our experiences, observations, and conversations with academic staff at various public and private universities in the country about their activities during the lockdown. These institutions include the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; Nnamdi Azikiwe Federal University, Awka; Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife; Covenant University, Lagos; Modibbo Adama University of Technology, Yola; and Niger Delta University Wilberforce Island, Bayelsa State. By gaining insights from our personal experiences and those of academics at Nigerian universities in three different sectors (federal, state, and private), we will reflect on how the pandemic shaped academics' participation in their scholarly activities in these postsecondary contexts, as well as their access to the affordable digital infrastructure they required to engage in this work and which entities provided this infrastructure.

Reflections from academics in Nigeria that we spoke to indicated that they have a strong commitment towards their profession. Only one person said that they used lockdown as a time to rest, while also indicating that they used this time to participate in different academic activities, such as, "Writing research proposals for DAAD and AvH, and the government of Canada; and attending five zoom conferences" (Ayo Adebooye, personal communication, 5 January 2021). The greater majority of academic staff (thirty-six persons) did not teach during the lockdown basically because the period corresponded with the ASUU strike. Few, however, employed in private universities engaged in teaching because they were not affected by the strike.

The academics' reflections indicate that both the lockdown and the ASUU strike provided an elongated quasi-research leave for Nigerian academics serving in public universities—a type of leave to which they rarely have access. Most, therefore, used the free time from the suspension of regular teaching and administrative duties to catch up on their personal studies and writing. In this space, many academics reflected on how, during this time, they were able to break new ground in their research engagements and venture into new research areas. Issues surrounding the cause of the lockdown—the corona virus pandemic—especially received attention across all disciplines as a research topic. Some of the new areas of study that academics described investigating during this time are listed below—many, if not all pertain to the COVID-19 pandemic:

• • Social media and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Observations from Nigeria

• • COVID-19 pandemic and the Nigerian

• • Consumer education as a solution to sustainable consumption amidst the COVID-19 pandemic

• • Godly response to governmental directives on COVID-19: Reflections on religious explanations of the pandemic.

• • COVID-19 directives and religious communities.

• • Religion and pandemics: Interrogating Christian/Muslim responses to COVID-19 in Nigeria

• • Downsides of COVID-19 among informal workers in Nigeria

• • The abnormal in the new normal of COVID-19 in Nigeria

• • COVID-19 and fluidity of identity

A novel development during the lockdown was that the majority of academics reflected on how they were able to work at their own pace. The absence of departmental and higher administrative regulations allowed people to determine their speed of work as well as the space to engage in recreational activities and rest. People carried on with their leisure activities alongside their academic engagements, but all academics reflected on how they also remained engaged in their professional activities throughout the lockdown. One respondent who conducted physical research during the lockdown reported being able to do that "because the lockdown was not so strict here" (Blessing Onyima, personal communication, 5 January 2021). In effect, different individuals responded to the lockdown depending the on the severity of the enforcement of lockdown regulation in their localities.

Academics also reflected on how they had to make a massive transition and migration to online conferencing among during the lockdown. They described having to attend mainly online conferences using Zoom and YouTube, forcing them, in many cases, to develop their abilities to use the internet. The new normal with respect to conferencing required that older generation of scholars, tagged "the analog generation," made necessary adjustments in their professions in order to remain in tune with the changing times. Unfortunately, Nigeria, like many growing economies, has a huge deficit with regard to the needed infrastructural requirements to ensure the smooth conduct of and participation in academic research via online means. Yet, this deficit did not halt their research work altogether as being resilient, many Nigerians academics have had to find ways to work around these challenges.

For instance, to do their research work, many academics reflected on needing a reliable internet connection and electricity, as well as a good laptop to engage in their research work. Others described needing funds to purchase data for the internet, whereas others described needing a conducive environment to engage in their work. Other academics also explained that they needed office space, a FTIR spectrometer, a gaschromatographymass spectrometer, a GC-FID, computer solar panels, a good smartphone, a well-equipped laboratory, water, microscopes, HPLC, a spectrophotometer used for analysis of products, library access, a digital camera, Zoom/YouTube apps, headphones and microphones, and a reactor for biodiesel production. Many of these research tools are taken for granted in developed nations; yet many described having to provide these tools themselves rather than rely on their universities.

Academics reflected on how they took on these responsibilities in order to increase their online visibility, boost their professional CVs, and create opportunities to meet new and useful people in their disciplines. In addition, many explained that participating in these academic conferences and workshops helped them to increase their number of publications, which they needed for promotion and career advancement. Career progression, promotion during assessment, the goal of obtaining the Nobel prize, professional contact and networking opportunities, improved learning and teaching, qualification for mentoring, boosting one's resume and advancing one's career as well as their online visibility were all reasons that academics engaged in these activities and who took responsibility for providing their own access to the infrastructure they required described.

It can be inferred that these Nigerian scholars, despite being locked down at home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the labor dispute between the government and academics in the country's public university sector, academics were not locked off from research activities. Rather, many described actively investing in infrastructure and creating an enabling environment in order to continue their research. Many academics engaged in these things to ensure they not only kept abreast of topical research in their various disciplines but also because they understood the importance of continuing to do research, learning, and publishing, all of which are sine qua non for career advancements.