The intractable ASUU crisis
This is no excuse for a government, if it were truly a people’s government to play deaf while all its public tertiary institutions remained under lock and key for three months. Only a misanthropic government acts like that. It is doubly shameful when one realises that the trio of President Yar’Adua, his vice, Goodluck Jonathan […]
This is no excuse for a government, if it were truly a people’s government to play deaf while all its public tertiary institutions remained under lock and key for three months. Only a misanthropic government acts like that. It is doubly shameful when one realises that the trio of President Yar’Adua, his vice, Goodluck Jonathan and Minister Egwu are all ex-dons. I find it difficult to blame Elder Onosode except to say that sometimes, even elder statesmen do not know the limits of their influence. The man surely did not have the mandate of government and only became a messenger running from pillar to post and at the end achieving nothing and virtually losing his hard-earned reputation in the process.
It is quite painful to see ASUU grappling to get its messages across to the Nigerian public. It is shameful that ASUU leadership failed to connect with the Nigerian public in its hour of need and had no communication plan in a serious crisis. Considering that these are teachers who evaluate students for advanced public relations certificates, ASUU was a serious PR disaster. Methinks that says how deep academics have sunk in terms of thematic or practical relevance. It is an issue I hope they look into when this whole nonsense is over.
At the phoney demonstrations by the dons in mock academic gowns, they passed on papers which portrayed them no better than mere charlatans interested in getting their share of the national cake at the expense of the crippling state of the arrest of dilapidating infrastructures in the ivory towers. For ASUU went on to compare and contract what its members earned vis-a-vis what senators, council chairmen and public officials earned. They missed a golden opportunity to show us graphically the decay in the universities, including caved in lecture halls built to accommodate hundreds of students without public address systems; the state of structures such as public conveniences in faculties and hostels.
It is quite pathetic because no professional has been banned from seeking public office. A don can join a political party if he believes that his bread is buttered better as a bank manager, senator or council boss – it’s still an open choice. ASUU certainly lost me there when they made that tabulation and sure gave the impression it is just interested in its own bread and butter over and above anything else. It is a public relations disaster. One can only hope that when they get out of this impasse, they will re-evaluate, re-organise and re-strategise in such a way that they attract our empathy to their cause in future.
It is a shame that the Adams Oshiomole truce is no truce at all. Yes, the dons are back but it would take the governing councils and a resolve of the issues which forced all other non-academic staff on strike to bring back full-fledged activities on the campuses. Oshiomole should have known that! But is this a fault big enough to make Oshiomole unworthy of his comrade title? Only time and the people of Edo State would tell in the final analysis.
By accepting to negotiate with Oshiomole in total apathy of the demands of the other unions, ASUU acted like the proverbial ostrich and the selfish Nigerian doctors who recently earned themselves a new salary scale at the expense of other equally worthy professionals in the health sector. It is a selfish move by the academics to think that they are the only trees that make the forest of the campuses. The principles of division of labour dictate that all arms are on deck to deliver quality education to the yearning public. Dons are no island. We hope that the governing councils would quickly meet, re-draw the jaundiced academic calendar and save scores of students, parents and guardians the misery that this senseless strike has caused this sick nation.