…AND ONCE AGAIN, ASUU (II)

Opposite Bayero University’s New Site on Gwarzo Road there was (still is) a Mobil petrol station. That was where all of us lecturers would queue up for several days to refill our cars during those dark days of the early 1990s before a national collective struggle made someone step aside and away, hopefully forever. If […]

Opposite Bayero University’s New Site on Gwarzo Road there was (still is) a Mobil petrol station. That was where all of us lecturers would queue up for several days to refill our cars during those dark days of the early 1990s before a national collective struggle made someone step aside and away, hopefully forever.

If my memory serves me well, one such day during the height of the fuel scarcity, a colleague of ours had spent almost three days on that Mobil fuel queue, but noticed that the police officers assigned to ensure security and equity at the filling station were doing alfarma (that corruption-driven preferential treatment of customers who had only just arrived but were willing to offer a bribe). Our lecturer colleague vehemently protested that injustice (as ASUU had made all of us teachers loud protestants, albeit with a small ‘p’). The policemen ignored him; he persisted, and the security agents pounced on him. They beat him mercilessly, to a pulp as the English would say. They went ahead and vandalised his car. Our friend escaped death, as we would say in Nigeria, by the skin of his teeth. He ran onto the campus beaten, bloodied, brutalised.

An emergency ASUU local branch meeting was summoned. Several options were discussed. At the end, it was agreed that the police authorities would be written to to do the following: have the erring officers punished; apologise to the victim; make amends for damaging him and his car via financial reparation; and promise not to engage in that misdemeanour ever again, anywhere. When they got our letter, it was said, the police top brass were said to have laughed and scoffed at it, and so refused to do anything for several days. A reminder was sent; they refused to act.

So another emergency ASUU was convened. And then the intelligence of academics came to fore. It was there and then resolved unanimously that the sons and daughters of police officers be made to pay for the sins of their fathers. Someone asked: ‘is it fair to visit the sins of the father on the children?’ Yes, he was replied, all is fair and just in war, and it was a war between ASUU and the police. For good measure, it was also resolved to add all the children of the military since, after all, it was the impunity of the military dictatorship that made it possible for the police to be so anti-human rights.

We all relished that assignment. I was departmental admissions officer, and knew well who and who were sons and daughters of the uniformed people. (At their discretion, some overzealous lecturers even added the children of ALL other uniformed people: immigration; customs, prisons; even vigilante!). We made a list of all of them, and informed the students what the matter was: that (sob! sob!) they were no longer our students until their fathers made amends.

And that communication was sent to the police. That their children and wards would never graduate from our university until they had made full amends to the letter of the first ASUU letter. A copy was sent to the military and other uniformed types. And it worked like magic. The military, the immigration, the prisons, all the uniformed men, asked the police what the matter was. Pressure was so high that the police top guy was said to have rushed to the university waving a white flag, signifying surrender. They made amends, and our beaten and brutalised colleague became a celebrity. ASUU had won. And their children graduated.

Another example occurred at a university Senate meeting. A certain daughter of a one-time military dictator had been truant and had not obtained the required 75% of class attendance to have allowed her sit for examinations, as the statutes of the university stipulated. So, because she did not (could not) sit for exams, that precious golden daughter was advised to withdraw. (In black and white, she was expelled. Universities are such educated places that they usually address such students in the third person singular, ‘advising’ them to withdraw). Was it politically correct to expel her? No! So a debate ensued. One professor finally provided the clincher: if we made exception for this top-notch daughter, then any student who had been asked to withdraw for the same reason since the institution became a university in 1976 should be recalled, readmitted and apologised to. Equity! The daughter remained expelled! ASUU won there again.

That was ASUU, a union which is still very angry. Angry about everything wrong with this nation. And so it should be. But the time has come to re-think. There is need for ASUU to re-strategise. The weapon it used against a military dictator may not be as effective when used against a civilian regime, dictatorial or Doolittle. The Union has to re-invent other methods and means of fighting a just cause. One means is through enhanced propaganda, a tactic ASUU had used so successfully in the past.

It is a fact that a majority of the Nigerian elite now have their children studying abroad. For the Southern elite, the United States and Britain used to be the destinations of choice. Not too log ago, the Northern elite joined this new ‘gold rush’. Malaysia, Dubai, Cyprus, Egypt, Turkey and other countries are today receiving Nigerian children and Nigerian dollars. For ASUU, sending these children abroad by the United Nigerian Elite (to give them a name in order to hang them) is the greatest vote of no-confidence in lecturers as teachers and in our universities.

Can’t ASUU use its connections abroad and get the list of all those children who are abroad (and causing this country more embarrassment than even 419)? The list should include those students sent by governments, state or federal; an indication that Nigerian governments are willing to fund overseas universities, not the ones at home. ASUU should start getting those lists. Publish them in the dailies. Buy airtime on all the nation’s private FM stations. Make a huge noise about it. Link these parents and governments with willful negligence of abandoning our universities and funding universities abroad. Win over the hearts of the poor and their parents. It will be a just cause. And include all children of lecturers who have joined this bandwagon, as I know quite a few.

So ASUU needs to restrategise. It has been said: ‘Don’t kick a man when he’s down, unless you’re certain he won’t get up!’