At three different times in the recent past (2007, 2009, 2011) this page had cause to discuss the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) when it embarked on yet another (arguably justifiable) strike action to press home demands.
For a fourth time in recent memory, we again have reason to go down that lane. At those three times in the past, as this time, ASUU's strike is about bettering the lives of our children (who have remained in our local universities) that are being short-changed by subsequent Nigerian governments in refusing to implement sovereign agreements. ASUU has returned to the trenches, and our children have returned home. Sad!
I am an academician first before I am a journalist. But I am also a parent like many parents of Nigerian children who have now been sent home on premature Ramadan Holidays. To wit, my daughter, a final year student at ABU, Zaria, was supposed to have graduated last year but came down with severe back ailment which necessitated a long hospitalisation at ABU's Teaching Hospital at Shika. She was on what they call traction (they tie weights to your legs) for several weeks, and on a wheelchair for several weeks more. Alhamdu lilLah she got better, but has had to drop a whole semester's courses, hoping to complete them this year. Alas!
No, not again, ASUU!
There is no profession more honourable than teaching. The 'honourable' in politics is fake; the prefix is automatically assumed the moment one is rigged - or rigs himself - into office. Teaching is divine. Prophets of God were known as teachers. Disciples of Jesus (Prophet Isa alaihis salam) addressed him as 'Teacher'. And, among teachers, university lecturers are a special breed. One does not usually become a Graduate Assistant unless one was quite sharp up there, (not that it matters anymore in this country). Anger!
Having said that, this Column believes the weapon of strike has been overbeaten by ASUU and by labour generally. Over time, the sharpness of strikes has been blunted by the sheer expectation of it, and by the resignation to fate most Nigerians have become accustomed to. ASUP, ASUU's counterparts in the Polytechnic system, are on strike. NARD, the Resident doctors, sounded the same alarm. NUPENG recently parked their tankers, just so they could see long queues at Abuja petrol stations, which they did. Government seems apparently unworried and unhurried. And Nigerian life just goes on. Pity!
No, not again, ASUU!
Around the time of the last ASUU strike a couple of years ago, when the money ASUU was asking for was N150 billion, the Central Bank announced that the exact amount ($1 billion) is what some Nigerian parents spend on their children studying in Ghana (common Ghana) and Egypt, Malaysia, Dubai, the UK, the US and other countries. Children of those who matter (the Presidency, Ministers and advisers, National Assembly Members, Judicial officers, top civil servants) are mostly not at Bayero University, Kano, or the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. How brazen!
And if these privileged children are not abroad, they are in our local 'Ivy Leagues' run by Americans and Turks. (And to say Turkey is not even an English-speaking country!). Children whose parents have 'eaten' ASUU's 'money' ARE not in BUK or ABU; they are ensconced abroad where there is no strike. They scoff at ours on Facebook and Twitter with their BBM Voice fake accents ('our semester is running smoothly here'), while their parents scoff at us by continuously hunting for Naira and gathering foreign exchange to pay the school fees. They also have now taken a full two-month leave (at least at the National Assembly) to visit their children abroad, while I spend mine with my daughter in Kano. And she has a bad back. Painful!
No, not again, ASUU!
Public servants whose children are abroad should be ASUU's target (no case against private people). The target has moved, and ASUU needs to re-strategise. There is need for 'targeted sanctions'. (And ASUU used it to devastating effect two decades ago at BUK. Your Columnist was involved.)
During the dark days of the early 1990s when a dictator deliberately created fuel scarcity to elongate his misrule (before a collective national struggle made him step aside, forever in sha Allah), lecturers used to spend several days on end at the Mobil station opposite BUK New Site. One such day, a colleague of ours, who had spent almost three days on that fuel queue, noticed the policemen 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 pay a bribe).
Our colleague protested that injustice (as ASUU had made us teachers loud protestants, albeit with a small 'p'). The policemen ignored him; he persisted, they pounced on him, beating him mercilessly, to a pulp as the English would say. They 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 meeting was summoned. Several options were discussed. At the end, it was agreed that police authorities be written to: have erring officers punished; apologise to victim; make financial amends; undertake never to engage in that again, anywhere. When they got our letter, we heard, the police top brass scoffed at it and refused to act for several days. A reminder was sent; they ignored it.
Another emergency ASUU was convened. And there the intelligence of academics came to fore. It was resolved unanimously that children of police officers be made to pay for the sins of their fathers. For good measure, we added the children of the military (after all, it was the impunity of military dictatorship that made it possible for police to unleash their own impunities).
We all relished that assignment. I was departmental admissions officer, and knew well the children of uniformed people, including a DIG's daughter to boot! At their discretion, some overzealous lecturers even added the children of ALL uniformed people: immigration, customs, prisons; even vigilante!). We made a list of all of them and the students they were in jeopardy until their fathers made amends.
And that was sent to the police. Their children would never graduate until they made full amends to the letter of the first ASUU letter. Copies were sent to the military and other uniformed types. It worked like magic. The military, immigration, prisons, all uniformed men descended on the police. Pressure was so high that the police top guy rushed to the university with a white flag, signifying surrender. They made amends, and our brutalised colleague became a celebrity. ASUU won.
No, not again, ASUU!
Another example occurred at a university Senate meeting. A certain First Daughter, biological child of a serving military dictator, had been truant and had below 75% in attendance, so was not allowed to sit for exams, as stipulated in university statutes. She was 'asked to withdraw' (universities' polite way of expulsion). Was it politically correct to expel her? No! A debate ensued. One professor finally provided the clincher: if we made exception for First 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! First Daughter remained expelled! ASUU won again.
So when target moves, hunter re-focuses. Enough said, ASUU. My daughter is at home, waiting. And she has a bad back. The children we should target are elsewhere, not in ABU.
Students please join thie writer and comment "No, not again, ASUU!"
