The meandering hands of ASUU
Awuzie, who spoke to reporters in Abuja, said the matter had gone beyond the National Judicial Council (NJC) and the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), especially since it involved the number one person in the judicial system who should hold others accountable. The ASUU leader said, “So this is what we are saying and I want […]
Awuzie, who spoke to reporters in Abuja, said the matter had gone beyond the National Judicial Council (NJC) and the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), especially since it involved the number one person in the judicial system who should hold others accountable.
The ASUU leader said, “So this is what we are saying and I want to state that the National Judicial Council (NJC) cannot hoodwink us or the Nigerian people by just telling us that the two of them should sheath their swords, or that the President of the Appeal Court should withdraw the case in court and that they have appointed three new Supreme Court Judges. That is begging the question! It is leaving the substance and pursuing the shadow.
“The substance is, there is an allegation hanging which the man has made, which has not been denied and that allegation, we should have sorted it out first before we talk about appointing more people to the Supreme Court because it could also mean that we are appointing and sending more people who will now get desecrated by the same influence.”
The most disturbing aspect of the ASUU president’s speech to the media was his threat to invoke public disorder to achieve the union’s target of getting Katsina-Alu out as Chief Justice of Nigeria.
Given the baffling decay in our educational system, other interest groups in the sector were in support of the union. Even then, some skeptic members of the public – parents in particular – whose wards spend months at home have become wary of the frequent strikes that have disrupted academic calendar of Nigerian universities. Still, ASUU is being accepted as a body necessary to bring sanity into our university system.
The question still remains whether the association has achieved its set goals. The rot in our university system still runs deep. Employers of labour are daily complaining about the quality of the graduates we churn out. The learning environment has been polluted not only by inadequate pay and facilities for learning but by the menacing presence of cult groups in the system. These roving death squads terrorize innocent law abiding students and lecturers on the campuses over issues that have nothing to do with improved learning.
The end result is that Nigerian Universities, despite ASUU, remain poorly rated even by African standards. Gone are the days when the first university in Nigeria, the one at Ibadan was rated among the best in Africa and even the Commonwealth of Nations.
It is in the face of these daunting challenges that one finds ASUU’s meandering hands in an issue that is clearly outside its mandate rather disturbing. There are constitutionally recognized bodies to tackle whatever may be the problem between the two top judicial officers in the country. Must every top government officer accused of wrong doing resign even when he has not been given the chance to give his own side of the story? Who made ASUU the chief judge over the judiciary?
If strikes on their own could solve deeply engrained societal ills, ASUU with its endless strikes would have purged the Nigerian university system of its ills. But look at where we are today. For ASUU now to jump into a more complex area like the judiciary and organize a crippling public protest simply does not make sense.
Salako Aderibigbe, 23, OlorunAdagba St, Alimosho, Lagos