To ASUU ‘strikers’: you are not my heroes

That is why I have chosen to call ASUU lecturers ‘’ASUU strikers’’. They complain that they are angry that our governments do not pay enough attention to education in Nigeria especially university education. They sound so patriotic and so concerned when you hear this from them. But what they have chosen to do in response […]

That is why I have chosen to call ASUU lecturers ‘’ASUU strikers’’. They complain that they are angry that our governments do not pay enough attention to education in Nigeria especially university education. They sound so patriotic and so concerned when you hear this from them. But what they have chosen to do in response to this patriotic observation is so baffling to some of us who are not egg heads like them: they seem to have a mission from hell to destroy what is left of the bad situation they say government has created.
How else can any sane person put it when prolong, crippling, disruptive and destructive strikes have become the ‘main work’ of our university lecturers instead of making what they say is a very bad situation better by teaching our children with total commitment and dedication? In all of my readings about strike as an instrument of negotiation and bringing about desirable change, strike is meant to be short, sharp and very specific in order to make a clear and sound point. But here, our lecturers have turned strike into the real work and the issues in contention are so omnibus that you do not really know what it is in particular they are striking about.
For instance, in the on-going three-month long strike, the lecturers, sorry ‘strikers’, have included among their grievances the non-alienation of federal landed property near some universities to the institutions! This demand is so ludicrous that in one of the remarks President Goodluck Jonathan made during his recent media chat he said he wondered how that demand became a part of the agreement in the first place! The way our strikers are going, one day we may wake up to hear them demand that each lecturer should be entitled to three exquisitely beautiful or handsome students of their choice as bush allowance or fringe benefits or else they will go on strike.
If I were Gani Fawehinmi and had his gift of meticulous public accounting, I would have been able to calculate how many years the nation has lost in the past 20 years since long strikes became a permanent feature of our universities. The late eminent lawyer produced a record of the number of months that former president Olusegun Obasanjo spent outside Nigeria gallivanting in pursuit of the elusive foreign investors.  I guess that such accounting would reveal that we have lost close to five solid academic years or even more in the past 20 years to unreasonable ASUU strikes. Lecturing has now become a recreational part of our lecturers’ work. The few days they spend in the campuses teaching is good time to plan the next most destructive and devastating strike, far longer than the one they had embarked upon previously.
And the amazing thing is that when the strikers are embarking on their strikes, they think they are displaying the highest form of patriotism. And the people have become so unbending because they think they are doing it for the sake of a better Nigeria and that they should be hailed as patriots and heroes.  But the title of my piece says it all: they are not my heroes.
They are not my heroes because they are unreasonable. They never listen to any plea from anyone. They think the rest of us are so foolish and unpatriotic that they need not listen to us. In the past three months, the president, ministers, parents, students, religious leaders, market women and just about everybody have pleaded that the strike should be called off yet the strikers are too assured of their patriotism that they have not respected any one.
Some of us are not fooled: those people have refused to go back to work not because they love Nigeria more than the rest of us. No. They have remained implacable because they will gain enormously from their destructive strike. When they eventually resume, they will get full pay for the months they have not worked. They can eat their cake and have it back that is why they do what they are doing. The day a Nigerian president will insist on no work no pay, the rubbish we are seeing from some of our labour unions will stop without any promptings from any quarters.
This strike nonsense has been on for so long because our governments are blackmailed by unconscionable labour leaders, sentimental citizens and especially the media who see labour agitators like pampered and overgrown babies whose temper tantrums must be attended to for the sake of peace. Our governments are over awed to accept all form of rubbish from people who behave like motor park touts who do not appear governed by any laws or even their consciences. If ASUU strikers are real patriots or people with conscience, they will not insist to be paid for the time they never lectured or did any research. But what do our super patriots do? The first item they will put in their agreement with government when they choose to call off a strike is that the full pay for the months they were on strike should be paid them and that no one should be victimised for participating in the strike.
No one talks about the harm done to students; they harm done parents and the grievous harm done the Nigerian society. I think when the history of Nigeria’s arrested development in the past 20 years is written ASUU strikers will feature prominently among the misguided, small minded and unpatriotic persons who contributed a large chunk of efforts to the collapse of the national edifice.
There are three institutions in Nigeria I have identified whose personnel I call devourers because they rob you of your precious time; they rob you of your precious money and deny you peace. Those three I pray every day that God should help me to avoid them as much as possible. The three are: the police, the law courts and the hospitals. Now, I will add the universities and perennially striking lecturers. One of the patriotic duties we owe to our country is telling the bitter truth to some citizens who are obviously misguided no matter their claim to patriotism and to intellectual prowess. I have started my own by telling ASUU people who love strike more than work that they are not my heroes. Never!