ASUU again? No; it’s the government! (2)
The House of Reps has resolved to intervene, but we were bloodied by their 419-ish intervention last time (everything went into voicemail when we suspended the strike). The Senate has expressed sadness with government infidelity, called a tripartite meeting and probably set up another committee. But where were they all along? Anyway, ‘Na eye I de luk!’ A ‘japaed’ doctor just reported that his salary for 6 months yonder was more than his 7 years’ earnings in Nigeria, while NANs had asked the FGN to ‘do something within 7 days’ or else…. But NANS has lost its mojo since it co-branded with politicians, giving them awards and riding official four-wheelers with several personal assistants for their executives. Somebody has noted that the public sees ASUU as the problem and has advised the government to sack and replace ALL lecturers, privatise universities, and proscribe ASUU, castigating lecturers as lazy folks who collect multiple salaries and chop their innocent daughters. But why does the government always introduce No Work, No Pay whenever ASUU is involved? I will reproduce my 2022 article with the above title, which followed a similar 2009 article. You can see that nothing has changed. Read on:
On 14/2/22, ASUU celebrated their love for our educational system by declaring a one-month rolling strike to be continuously rolled over as circumstances demanded. ASUU’s actions usually follow an unusual pattern. The government will willingly sign an agreement and ignore it, and ASUU will strike. Then the government will unleash propaganda warfare, make some tokenistic gestures, the public will plead, and ASUU will succumb. All the promises will fizzle out (like the kind promises made to a mistress on the bed) until the next strike. To buttress my point, I reproduce my article with the above heading, published in the BusinessDay of 13/7/09. Read on.
“The public reaction has been, as usual, dictated mostly by vested interests. Everybody agrees that ASUU has a solid case, but students want to speedily complete their programmes, while parents want their children very far away from home.”
‘When the axe first came into the forest, the trees said, “It is one of us; the handle came from our stock.”’ They assumed wrongly that the axe would definitely be for them. This exposes the bewilderment of ASUU at the unfortunate happenings in the educational sector under Yar’Adua, who is on leave of absence from academia, just like Goodluck Jonathan, Sam Egwu and even Madam Dora! ASUU felt that their interests were well protected, and so, they lowered their guard. This created the opportunity for that ‘original sin’ early in the day, which indicated that this particular axe would be merciless!
On 1/7/07, ASUU called off a 98-day-old strike because of a mere promissory note from the then-new president, Yar’Adua. He promised that those issues that led to that strike would be resolved and the ‘renegotiation process completed speedily’. ASUU probably agreed because the president was a comrade and presented a humane face and the image of somebody with integrity. Well, he did nothing about the issues, and the ‘speedy renegotiation’ dragged on till December 2008. Those who pleaded with ASUU then to call off the strike in 2007 started asking ASUU to shelve the strike of 2009!
The government has been peddling outright falsehoods against ASUU. There must have been an agreement, and that was what Dr Egwu asked ASUU to come and sign on 12/5/09. A budget of N200bn for the Ministry of Education and its parasitic parastatals does not evidence increased funding! Even the touted N78bn is not up to 5% of what was sunk into the power sector or constituency projects or political office holders’ allowances for 2009 or just one deal at the NNPC. And Mrs Akunyili knows that agreements are not reached at one-sided FEC meetings or during NTA Network news.
The public reaction has been, as usual, dictated mostly by vested interests. Everybody agrees that ASUU has a solid case, but students want to speedily complete their programmes, while parents want their children very far away from home. NANS has, however, threatened to embark on a national solidarity demonstration. Ngozi Nwozo of the Nation abhors the punitive impact of the strike on the students (2/7/09); Obadere of Businessday condemned the government’s serial infidelity. Azu of Punch pilloried the relevant FGN officials but still argued that the strike had developed reversed potency and would not solve any problem (30/6 & 7/7/09), while Akpan of NewsWatch recalled that the government had not fulfilled 18 agreements with ASUU between 1981 and 2005 and called on the government to be responsible for a change (13/7/09). Continues next week.
Ik Muo, PhD, Dept of Business Admin, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye. 08033026625
