JONATHAN’S FLAWED BLACKMAIL MISSTEP ON ASUU STRIKE

Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU has never in history been known to have capitulated to blackmail. Act of forcing or threatening to reveal shameful or incriminating facts about the Union in the past have never bent the will of the lecturers’ Union to abandon its cause to better the lot of brain boxes. Neither will unfair bullying diminish their resolve to ensure that the universities in Nigeria are rehabilitated and sanitized. The renewed zeal by the Jonathan administration to use assortment of subtle antics to compel ASUU to call off the strike, is nothing, but blackmail. The government, simply, can be likened to a man who uses butter knife in a machine gun fight. Aside hell being let loose by NANS and myriads of other stakeholders, including but not limited to market women, mechanics, farmers, politicians, etc., the lecturers, are being counseled, not to give in because doing so will further exacerbate the already comatose state of the nation’s educational sector, especially the universities. Indeed, notwithstanding speculated progress purported to have been made in resolving the protracted disagreement between the Union and Federal Government as revealed by Professor Bolaji Aluko, Vice-Chancellor, University of Otueke, ASUU should not believe government and call off the strike on account of this overture or upon the wave of sponsored rent-a-crowd uprising across the country, whose intent only is to blackmail the lecturers to suspend the strike. Ample evidence exists of how dishonorable government and its officials are when it comes to honoring agreements and keeping to its promises. Ask the Nigerian Medical Association, NMA executives. Despite repeated warnings and plea from ASUU for the government to do something before commencement of the strike onJuly 2, 2013, it ignored the lecturers, and instead 24 hours after a meeting was deadlocked between both parties, the first lady, Patience Jonathan, and her Office, which Professor Wole Soyinka, aptly described as, ‘domestic appendage of the Presidency’, embarked on scandalous jamboree in Abuja wherein she congregated thousands of Nigerian women and wasted billions of naira that would have assisted in funding, and infrastructure upgrade in the universities. The program, which lasted for days, was tagged Nigerian Women for Peace and Empowerment Rally. Nigerians, literally, have been going on their knees to plead with the lecturers to suspend the three months plus strike since then. Most of them waxed conciliatory at the initial stage but this week it took rather provocative slant, with many of them expressing a willingness to go to WAR with them for the long-drawn-out shutdown. The sudden umbrage against the lecturers is being explained away as a direct response for intransigence of the eggheads not to shift grounds in their negotiation with the Federal Government. And they, I mean some Nigerians are not only content at calling the lecturers all manner of names but have backed their anger with action. Not unexpected, a colony of angry women took to Abuja streets to register their disenchantment with the lecturers. To them, the academics had gone too far and should be forced to call off the strike. But hardly had they made the protest round to the sealed gate of the National Assembly, whose members had been on recess, than many of them were spotted to be card- carrying and front line members of the ruling People’s Democratic Party, PDP. Was politics indeed, involved in this, this time around? Methinks that President Good luck Ebele Jonathan owes an explanation for this. With the strike consuming, so to speak, of Professor Ruqayyatu Rufa’I, former Minister of Education (she was sacked by the president) and the incumbent supervisor, Nyesome Wike, a swashbuckling fellow intent to prove a point and hold tenuously onto the portfolio(Don’t forget that his elevation from a junior position appeared more as a booty reward for routing Governor Chibuike Ameachi than for any other reason), foot soldiers of the government were quick to point accusing fingers on ASUU leadership, in addition to reproaching them for being used by politicians. President Good luck Ebele Jonathan only used his Presidential Media Chat to restate the obvious – that the strike was politically motivated. Undeniably, the women pro-government end-the-strike-protest was a dress rehearsal to a floodgate of other pro-government remonstrations that came in quick successions from different camps, with the most being a disheartening perfidy that came from an amorphous group which tagged itself Association of Young Academics – not sure what this really means! The Judas shadow was manifestly written all over their faces when they held their press conference. The butchers might have concluded their plans now to hit the protest road by now! Is it not glaring that we needed no soothsayers’ clairvoyant inquest to prove that the upswing in the renewed effort to compel the lecturers to suspend the strike, is, also politically motivated. Is the Abuja rent-a-crowd protest not sufficient evidence to prove this? We are all aware, that this kind of antics, which had been the norm than an exception in our clime in the past, is now being elevated to another Machiavellian coil. Badamosi Banbagida, an ex-president who invented it and late General Sani Abacha, the goggle wearing ex-president that popularized it, I am sure will be smiling now! I am not bordered with the groundswell of emotion displayed by the rent-a-crowd protesters crowing over the places especially in Abuja over the strike. Why would a responsible government not honour an agreement reached with ASUU in 2009? The Bolshevik nature and gunboat diplomacy method of the government in engaging with the academics is being swept under the carpet by most Nigerians. Why would we not use this opportunity to fix our universities once and for all? Why undermine a genuine effort to rejig our ivory towers. Why is blackmail now being used to coerce ASUU to suspend the strike? Even the students are being paid to join the protest fray as well -National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, the umbrella body of Nigerian Student under the leadership of Yinka Gbadebo appeared to have sold out. Have we imagined the effect of this on teacher-students relationship post ASUU strike? Will Nigerians forget so soon the habitual and unreliable nature of government officials that do not keep to promises, and who are quick to repudiate any one as soon as it is signed off on? How are we sure that government will not renege again, and again as they wont to do in the past, once the academics heed to reason to call off the strike? If Jonathan’s’ government is unwilling to concede to ASUU’s demand, will he also act in same manner in the instance that the working conditions of his ministers, members of the National Assembly and his other team members, that is their salaries, allowances, infrastructure, enabling environment and other motivations are impacted negatively as the nations’ universities and ASUU members are currently undergoing. Let’s face the fact and stop acting emotional. Any effort directed at fixing the nation’s universities, and which require high sacrifice on our part should be borne by all with dignified joy so as to ensure secured future for our youths, and for our socio-economic, political, scientific, technological development(s). Insisting that ASUU members are greedy is beside the issue as the government camp would want to make us believe, for this would neither resolve the issues on the table or remedy the already distressed educational sector. Are we not ashamed that the total amount budgeted for 700 ex-militants in Nigeria for training and upkeep abroad far exceed the annual funding expense for 20 Nigerian universities? How do we explain the ‘‘glorified primary schools “status of our universities, and dearth of infrastructure, to the extent that over 90% of them are without internet services, outdated libraries, and with Students sitting on bare floor or peeping through windows to attend lectures. ASUU has its problems too. However, I make bold to admit, that theirs are minuscule when compared with the wroth visited on our universities on account of corruption and neglect by successive governments. President Good luck Ebele Jonathan has not fared better. Let this not be another public policy management disaster that could not be creatively identified, managed and delivered crisis-free to Nigerians by the government. ASUU should not call off the strike on account of blackmail from government or from the rent-a-crowd troop but on the conviction that the point has been made that time is running out on the nation’s universities, which if unattended to would lead to total collapse of the universities, and for the love of the teaching profession. Blackmail is only a misstep in engaging with ASUU to call off the strike. By Leonard Nzenwa