London – A vote holding the United Kingdom government in “contempt of parliament” is historic – but other than causing acute embarrassment to Prime Minister Theresa May that leaves her with a bloody nose, its fallout is limited.

The motion was passed because of May’s failure to release legal advice given to her cabinet about the deal she has reached with the European Union on the terms of the country’s turbulent “Brexit” from the bloc.

It is the first time that ministers have been reprimanded by the House of Commons in this way in modern parliamentary history.

However, the legal advice in dispute was promptly published this morning and merely confirms what many MPs suspected anyway – that complex “backstop” arrangements to keep the UK in Europe’s customs union following Brexit could last indefinitely.

What happened?

Members of parliament voted by 311 votes to 293 on Tuesday to find May’s Conservative government in contempt for failing to obey a parliamentary order, agreed by MPs in November, to release its legal advice.

The vote was sparked by the insistence of the Attorney General Geoffrey Cox – acting on the instructions of May herself – that it was not in the public interest to publish the advice.

Instead, earlier this week Cox published a summary of the advice given to his colleagues and then took questions from MPs – sparking outrage.

The opposition Labour Party’s shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer accused May’s ministers of “wilfully refusing” to comply with a binding parliamentary instruction.

Evidently, enough MPs from the government’s own side agreed – albeit for diverse and conflicting reasons – and the motion of contempt was passed.

What is contempt?

Contempt reflects anything that interferes with or obstructs parliament or its members from doing their jobs – but is loosely defined, and determined on a case by case basis.

While in the past this has included criminal acts or efforts to mislead the House, parliament is limited in the sanctions it can impose. It can, for example, order the government to take a particular course of action and escalate threats to suspend ministers.

“Parliament’s powers to punish contempt are quite weak,” said Catherine Haddon of the Institute for Government. “Parliament used to be able to imprison or fine perpetrators, as a court of law, but these powers have lapsed. The last time parliament fined someone was in 1666 – and the last time it imprisoned anyone was in 1880.”

Oliver Patel, research associate at the University College London European Institute, added while contempt is a serious matter, the charge is now likely to proceed to a standards committee where Conservative members could kick it into the long grass.

“I presume the fact that they are publishing this legal advice right now is the concession – and I’m not sure there will be any further tangible implications. This is probably the end of this story.”

What are the implications?

While the contempt vote has little direct bearing on the divisive process by which the UK will actually exit the EU, it is of considerable symbolic importance.

In the UK’s ancient parliament, it is what Starmer described as “a badge of shame” that can force the accused to protect their reputations.

In the past, this has prompted ministers to resign after being accused of misleading the House – but before contempt proceedings were formally launched.

On this occasion, however, the government’s reputation is already in tatters, which explains why May was prepared to risk further damage by holding out on this issue.

This means the contempt vote can be understood above all as a political manoeuvre by those MPs in parliament unhappy at the way she has excluded them from the Brexit negotiating process – and hence a signal they are wresting back control.

Patel said while the contempt vote was “a sideshow”, the fact that the legal advice was now being published could be politically significant by confirming “in black and white” the UK cannot unilaterally leave the backstop and by providing Labour with ammunition.

Anand Menon, professor of European politics and foreign affairs at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera: “If you’re a bird watcher and you see a rare bird, it makes your day; this is a bit like that … if you’re into Westminster.

“But if your real interest is what is the future of British relations with the European Union, it’s probably not as significant as you might think, and I’m not sure it has changed all that much.”

Nsukka, Nigeria – On a hot December afternoon in this southeastern town, a dry, dusty wind blows over the main entrance gate of the University of Nigeria campus. 

Only a few cars and a handful of people are trickling in and out. Six motorcycle taxi drivers are bantering, their bikes parked in upright positions nearby. There are few clients today.

In an off-campus neighbourhood about 2km from the gate, third-year university student John Chukwu sits on his mattress in a single room in a rundown tenement. Reclining against the wall, he occasionally glances at sheets of paper on the bed as he makes notes. He is trying to solve ordinary differential equations.

But his room isn’t where he should be, at least not in the opening weeks of the semester.

“I honestly feel terrible,” Chukwu, a 25-year-old student of mathematics, said. “The strike by university lecturers is affecting me and other students because nothing is happening on campus.”

On November 4, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the union of Nigerian university lecturers, announced it would be going on strike just a year after it suspended its last industrial action.

“This strike will be total, comprehensive and indefinite,” ASUU national president, Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, was quoted by local media as saying.

“Our members shall withdraw their services until the government fully implements all outstanding issues as contained in the memorandum of action of 2017 and concludes the renegotiation of the 2009 agreements.”

Public universities

With this declaration came the closure of more than 90 public universities in Nigeria. For nearly two decades now, the union and the central government have been at loggerheads over several issues including funding, salaries, university autonomy and academic freedom.

Though the government has continually entered into agreements with the union since 2001, university professors say implementation of the terms is slow and, in most cases, their requests are totally ignored.

Nigerian students bear the brunt of this long-standing battle between both parties, which fills parents and students alike with dread. At any time, it could mean anything between one week to five months of no education.

When Precious Mbah gained admission to study English and literature at the University of Nigeria in October, she was overjoyed. She travelled from the commercial city of Lagos on a 10-hour bus journey to Nsukka, a town in the southeastern Nigerian state of Enugu.

“I was excited and I look forward to seeing what the lecture hall will look like, what kind of classmates I will be meeting, what my lecturers will teach me and even how the campus environment looked,” Mbah said.

The next day she spruced herself up and walked to the Faculty of Arts complex. “My first day as a student began with the news that there was a strike by lecturers, and I was like what I have been hearing about has finally happened to me,” the 18-year-old freshman said.

Helplessness

Asked how her she feels about the situation, freshman student of music Linda Okwor struggled to rein in her emotions.

“I hate to say that my excitement reduced drastically when I found out that ASUU had gone on strike,” Okwor, 19, said. “I felt helpless and for the first time I hated this country.”

Anger and frustration among students can translate into outbursts of indignation towards university staff.

Okwor added: “Couldn’t ASUU have waited for us, freshmen students at least, to know what it actually feels like to be an undergraduate? Is this the ‘welcome’ they were supposed to tell us?”

But the chairman of ASUU branch at the University of Nigeria, Ifeanyichukwu Abada, told Al Jazeera that university employees also have children in public universities who are home because of the industrial action.

“If you look at the items ASUU is pushing for the government to implement they are of immense benefit to members of the public, not only to ASUU,” said Abada, also head of the University of Nigeria’s political science department.

“Strikes are not the best option but since we have irresponsible leaders who do not honour agreements it is the only language they understand.”

As long as the government continues to renege on its agreement with university teachers, strikes will continue to be a reality for Nigerian students, the union says.

Overcrowded and unhealthy

These disagreements forced the government to constitute an inter-ministerial committee to travel around the country to conduct an assessment of the issues raised by ASUU. In its report in November 2012, the committee found facilities for teaching and learning were, in its words “inadequate, dilapidated, overstretched or overcrowded” and in some cases improvised.

The report also revealed just 43 percent of Nigeria’s 37,504 university lecturers have PhDs. It noted that accommodation facilities for students were overcrowded and unhealthy.

“These conditions, coupled with the general condition of the universities, produce graduates that lack confidence and sometimes even self-worth,” the report noted.

The immediate impacts on students include a disruption of academic activities and a disjointed academic calendar. Once a strike is called off, students have to complete all coursework within a shortened timeframe, meaning they have less time to attend classes and study. Students who should ordinarily spend four to five years in the university sometimes end up staying an extra year or more because of the labour strife.

Government authorities have a penchant of threatening to sack lecturers who fail to return to work during industrial action. This often exacerbates tensions between academics and public officials.

Poor working conditions for academic staff have led to a brain drain since the 1980s. Some lecturers have been forced to moonlight as visiting professors in several universities at a time, making them less available.

The lack of trust in the university system has also fuelled growth in private institutions. At present, there are about 75 of them, mostly owned by churches, businessmen, politicians and wealthy individuals. But most are costly and out of reach for millions of Nigerians.

More students travel to neighbouring countries such as Ghana, Togo and Benin where they are sure to graduate within the timeframe required for their fields. Some even head to the United States or the United Kingdom.

In 2017, out of 37,735 African students studying in the US, 11,710 were Nigerian – representing 31 percent of the continent’s students there – the highest number from an African country.

Low pay

University staff have, as far back as 1973, demanded better wages.

University staff had enjoyed better salaries in the past. However, after the military entered and dominated the political space starting in 1966, things began to change. Military rulers meddled heavily in university affairs, lecturers left the country for better working conditions, causing learning and research to deteriorate.

ASUU was formed in 1978 when the brain drain was gaining as much steam as the struggle for university autonomy and academic freedom. In 1988, it organised its first strike, asking the government to address the issue and provide more funding. The military government proscribed the union and tortured and detained some of its leaders.

Though the ban on the ASUU was lifted in 1990, the repressive measures to rein in union members, perhaps, made some more strong-willed. From 1992 until 2013, ASUU has embarked on industrial action nearly every year. The longest strike lasted from July 1 to December 17, 2013.

That action was a result of the failure of the government to implement a 2009 agreement stating it would improve funding and conditions of service and promote greater university autonomy and academic freedom.

One of the major issues in the memorandum of understanding signed in 2013 with the federal government involved a yearly fund of $687.5m to be deposited into a special account at the central bank to develop public universities. This was meant to happen every year until the end of 2018.

The central government has not kept its promise since 2013.

In September, the federal government approved $62.5m to develop public universities, falling short of the 2013 agreement.

Math student John Chukwu worries the seeming inability of the government to reach an agreement with ASUU could dismantle the new semester.

“I made plans on how to go about my lectures, personal study and recess hours,” he said. “But as it stands now, all of that has got to change owing to the strike.”

LONDON — Senior Facebook executives allegedly blocked rivals from accessing the company’s user data to maintain dominance over vast swathes of the digital world, according to internal Facebook documents published Wednesday.

The documents made public by the British parliament also show that Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, and other senior officials discussed strategies to demand that companies buy digital advertising on the social networking giant, or face being cut off from lucrative user data that had helped these businesses target people on the platform.

The executives similarly talked about asking companies that accessed Facebook data to share their own data with the social network if they wanted to retain access to Facebook’s trove of information on its users worldwide.

The allegations come as pressure mounts on the social network’s collection, storage and use of people’s data, including the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the British data analytics firm gained illegal access to information on 87 million Facebook users.

Facebook denies any wrongdoing and says that the documents published by the British parliament give a misleading picture of what took place. Cambridge Analytica also insists that it did nothing wrong.

The documents lie at the heart of a lengthy U.S. lawsuit brought by the start-up Six4Three against the social networking giant.

Wednesday’s disclosures, however, will likely ratchet up the pressure on Facebook as they provide internal documents, including from Zuckerberg, the company’s 34-year-old co-founder, that allegedly portray the company using its control over people’s photos, contact lists and other personal information to maintain a competitive advantage over rivals.

In an email chain from early 2013, for instance, Zuckerberg gave his approval to cut off data access to Vine, a now-defunct rival video-sharing service run by Twitter, because the product allowed users to find friends on Facebook. Justin Osofsky, a Facebook vice-president, wrote in an email: “Unless anyone raises objections, we will shut down their friends API access today,” in reference to Vine’s access to Facebook’s data feed.

Zuckerberg replied: “Yup, go for it.”

The documents lie at the heart of a lengthy U.S. lawsuit brought by the start-up Six4Three against the social networking giant. Six4Three had allowed people to view bikini pictures of their friends through Facebook, and sued when its access to data was cut. The company had repeatedly tried to make the internal documents from Facebook public in the United States, but had been rebuffed by a Californian judge.

But when Six4Three’s boss was in London recently on business, Damian Collins, a U.K. lawmaker, used antiquated laws that allow the U.K. parliament to make forced seizures, to acquire the documents.

In U.K. parliamentary testimony last week, Richard Allan, a senior Facebook lobbyist, told lawmakers the internal documents had been taken out of context, but refused to give further evidence due to the ongoing gag order issued against the documents by the U.S. court.

In a Facebook post, Zuckerberg defended the actions that he and others had taken, saying that they had decided against demanding companies pay for ads for continued access to people’s data. “I understand there is a lot of scrutiny on how we run our systems,” he wrote.

“It’s important that the coverage of what we do — including the explanation of these internal documents — doesn’t misrepresent our actions or motives.”

Despite Facebook’s denials, the internal corporate documents suggest that the company was actively using data access as leverage over rival companies and those eager to access Facebook’s global user base.

In email discussions from late 2012, Zuckerberg also outlined why he believed that Facebook should push for so-called ‘data reciprocity’ with companies that wanted to build their own digital services on top of the company’s global social network. The idea, outlined in several email chains, was that other companies would still be able to access Facebook’s data archives to build their products, as long as they allowed Facebook to similarly access their information.

“Full reciprocity means that apps are required to give any user who connects to FB a prominent option to share all of their social content within that service back to Facebook,” Zuckerberg wrote.

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