The glove is off. But naked cant remains to scam the unwary.
Still, the strike-loving Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) continues to play the tortoise which thought it had gamed everyone, but later found it only gamed itself.
The tortoise once declared itself not only the all-wise, but the sole path to all reason. Why? Because, it preened, it had captured all human gumption in a sole magic gourd.
Yet, a mere palm wine tapper schooled the cocky fellow in basic gumption: you can’t climb a palm tree with a gourd — magic or no — dangling on your belly, as the tortoise had attempted!
That was folkloric grand metaphor for grand hubris.
ASUU has entered its own grand hubris, though it appears too deluded to realize it. In a huff, it is threatening more strike if its members are not paid for the six months that they have so far paralyzed public universities.
For six months now, it’s been patriotic huffing-and-puffing, by the glorious unionists, on the imperative to adequately fund universities — no crime.
Indeed, ASUU president, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, celebrated champion of the masses’ right to solid university education, once bragged ASUU could stay off duty for two years, just to make that patriotic point — and no threat, of no salary, could deter it. Bravo!
But after “just” six months, it’s all down to the belly — for which ASUU will literally kill, given its violent growl at the government’s decision of no-work-no-pay!
Might ASUU have assured its members that no matter how long they were on strike, it would always muscle the government to pay them? That decision — anchored on sound law, not on executive whims — seems to have burst that costly delusion!
Yet, but for acquired academic terrorism, how can scholars so-called, worth their names in academic rigour, shun their jobs for six months, and all illogic, push the near-divine right to be paid, or heavens would fall?
Indeed, how do you stay off your work for six months and still kid yourself you have a job? But for the wanton abuse of public goodwill, which private sector employer would tolerate such worker rascality — replicated year in, year out, without wielding the big stick?
Read Also: ASUU: now the real strike begins
Where is the ASUU sense of value, even if its members’ conscience appears long lost to arid groupthink and empty Aluta sloganeering? Where is their sense of critical reason, long abandoned to the sweet allure of cheap threats?
How about this caustic threat from the supposed Palladium of reason? “If government says no work, no pay, ASUU members will also begin lectures from the 2022/2023 session and forego unfinished academic sessions during the strike,” the ASUU president just told Channels TV!
Just like that! And what happens to the poor youths from poor homes, whose cause ASUU has boisterously championed in its endless strikes? They don’t matter again?
Indeed, folks’ true character oozes forth in times of crisis! Here, ASUU’s crisis of the pocket is throwing up its dirty underbelly! That snap view isn’t pretty!
Might this then be some ASUU Samson’s syndrome, that would crash everything, on everyone including itself, just because this time it might not get its way?
How do these peculiar scholars relate to peers elsewhere, who teach, research and do community service to boot, while our own ASUU luxuriates in strikes but whips up “research and community service” as rogue blackmail to corral salary for work not done?
The ever-colourful Chuba Wilberforce Okadigbo (God bless his soul!) once taunted the power-drunk Nigerian political military as “coup heroes”!
Okadigbo-speak: Does the Nigerian academia then teem with “strike heroes” (more of villains), under ASUU’s bizarre banners, when they ought to be garlanded with ground-breaking research, for the glory of their immediate environment, as any sane academia ought to be? Strike heroes!
The Congress of University Academics (CONUA), a rival academic union, just released damning stats on ASUU’s strike spree. ”Between 1999 and 2021, Nigerian public universities experienced strikes for 1, 417 days, which translates to over five years”!
Actually, the math translates to almost four years — 3. 9 years. Even then, going on strike for a cumulative four years, in 22 academic years, is quite some catastrophe!
How many youths’ lives were ruined during such strikes? How many did drop out of school because their little funding ran out? Talk of endless strikes as academic villainy!
That the government allowed itself to be bullied, and ASUU members got paid for those years of creative idleness, led to rich reward for bad conduct. That has fuelled ASUU’s present brazen demand. Not again!
Still, to be fair, it takes two to tango. The ASUU-Federal Government macho match-up has been the stuff of titanic wars, dating back to the military era.
But it had always ended in a stalemate: with ASUU hiding its own excesses behind patriotic pretensions, while roasting the government on the altar of adverse public sentiments.
The government itself is hardly innocent. For one, it has over the years lugged brazen notoriety as chronic non-covenant keeper. For another, the government appears plagued by general opacity, lack of transparency and a perception crisis.
ASUU has seized all three, with both hands, to go on its favourite pastime, expecting thunderous cheers for its foxtrots; and hectoring to be paid for its high drama in premium man-hour wanton wastes.
In all of this macabre drama, no one bothers to ask: was the government wilful and wayward in breaking those agreements, as ASUU alleges and as many verily believe?
Or were the ruptures due to honest inability: too many government programmes chasing too little available funds? Plagued by mutual distrust across the isle, everyone is too busy screaming at themselves to hold a reasoned exchange.
Yet, clinical interrogation would appear the sane point to start, if solution to the problem must be found.
Core to the university crisis is funding. How do legitimate agitations get out this critical funding, without paralyzing strikes? That’s one area the two sides, the media and the general public must work out.
ASUU strikes have become a journey to nowhere. But since ASUU has proved itself incapable of plotting a less wasteful path, the National Assembly should come up with emergency law, voiding any strike that exceeds two weeks in the tertiary education sub-sector.
To put an end to those wild years of wild strikes, the federal government must call ASUU’s bluff: no work, no pay. If ASUU demurs, it can take its case to court and seek remedy there, while it swallows its pride, claws its wins, and return to work.
Such is far more civilized than the Samson’s syndrome ASUU now waves, to bury everyone, including its members, for facing no pay for no work done. (The Nation)
