Organized through the Academics Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), academics at Nigeria’s public universities are on strike. They’re seeking to force the Nigerian government to implement a 2009 agreement promising increased pay and greater investment in tertiary education. Over the years, the government has been steadily defunding public universities and encouraging privatization. In this episode, Will chats to Sa’eed Husaini and Temitope Fanguwa to understand the origins of the strike, as well as the role of academics in Nigeria’s left politics. On the heels of #EndSARS, could Nigeria be on the cusp of its own #FeesMustFall moment?

Temitope is a Marxist historian with a central focus on African economic history in the Department of History and International Studies, Osun State University, as well as a budding social justice activist and epistemic-decolonizer; and Sa’eed is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Lagos and a contributor at Africa Is a Country plus Jacobin Magazine. Sa’eed is also a regular guest host of The Nigerian Scam, a leftist podcast examining politics, history, and the fraudulence of bourgeois society from class and ideological perspectives—be sure to check it out.

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