Last week, following a breakdown in its negotiations with the Nigerian Federal Government, the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities (ASUU), the umbrella body of faculty across the country’s public universities, embarked on a four-week “comprehensive and total strike.” ASUU had pleaded its case with various pressure groups and interested parties in the education sector before deciding that the most effective way to get the government’s attention was to go on yet another strike. The Nigerian public has reacted with understandable resignation. The latest strike is the union’s second in two years; the last strike in 2020 lasted nine months, effectively obliterating a whole academic calendar year. Data compiled by a local newspaper show that between 1999 and 2020, “ASUU went on strike for a total of 1,450 days.”

No country in South Asia has been fully spared by the coronavirus pandemic. This week Pakistan’s confirmed cases of COVID-19 ticked up dramatically, and India moved into a near-complete lockdown. Wit…