JUST IN: ASUU And Strike Bug
The Nation has written on ASUU and strike bug.
That the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has a strike bug is clear. Each time an ASUU president emerges, he probably develops a complex to stage his or her own strike, in the tradition of “my strike is bigger than yours”. That seems to confirm the new helmsman’s Aluta essence.
Might that be what new ASUU President, Prof. Victor Osodeke is doing, with the latest threats of ASUU to go on strike yet again? Well, who knows? Prof. Osodeke was voted ASUU president on 30 May 2021.
But doctrinaire ASUU, comrade-veterans and unfazed heroes of past paralyzing strikes, would sizzle at any suggestion that their strikes are anything but noble or patriotic.
Yet, you could not help but see ASUU and strike exertions in the guise of crying wolf. In this case, it’s not as if there are no wolves — there are. The universities should be in better shape — no question about that.
But the snag is that strikes, as a corrective and interventionist tool, appear to have gone past their potency. So, each time ASUU belches “strike” now, folks just yawn, long, jeering and contemptuous, giving the impression that the nuisance is here again! Pray, is that not near-tantamount to crying wolf when there is none?
ASUU itself is getting the message. A few days ago, a cross-religious lobby took the ASUU case to President Muhammadu Buhari. The president said his government was committed to honouring its agreements with ASUU. But ASUU itself should be sensitive to the current economic bind, since everything has to do with dwindling resources — hardly an unreasonable response.
A few days after, however, ASUU was back at its old hobby — strikes and threat of strikes. But perhaps to manifest its progressive impotence, ASUU lamented, at least as captured by a Nigerian Tribune headline, how the Federal Government was “dribbling” the union.
But Chris Ngige, Labour and Employment minister riposted, as quoted by The Nation, by accusing ASUU of “blackmail”, and for allegedly spewing more sentiments than plain truth.
Though both remain in the realm of claims and counter-claims, it is clearly a notorious fact that ASUU’s hitherto high moral ground is all but diminished; and it is forced to scream and screech in the public space, not assured of overwhelming support from any of its hitherto besotted publics: the students, their parents, ASUU members themselves beyond the Aluta gang, critical section of the media and the general public.
What’s that about the insanity of doing the same thing and yet expecting a different result? That describes ASUU and its perennial strikes. ASUU, as eggheads, should learn to think out of the box. But when its set formula is strikes and more strikes, that does grave damage to its brand equity as Nigeria’s prime intellect.
ASUU should move to a new era. The threats of strikes and more strikes reduce its thinking and reasoning capacity. That is a huge but self-inflicted shame on our preening university teachers.
