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ASUU-FG Face-Off: The Other Side

September 4, 2009

Nigerians are an insatiable lot; Nigerian students are no different. No government at any level has ever succeeded in pleasing them. At the Federal level, it is worst. Umaru Musa Yar’Adua has severally come under public opprobrium in his two-year presidential reign for many reasons, and after reshuffling his tactics for the realization of the people-maligned seven-point agenda, his critics can’t just stop feasting. Having calmly endured such confidence-dampening tags as Baba go slow, Baba die die, Baba hold up and Baba traffic jam, the erstwhile Katsina State Governor has opted to adopt unconventional yet productive leadership styles, still the people grumble.


In implementing his new policies, he has sought help from some of his supporters and cabinet men. One of those who have graciously agreed to lend a warm helping hand (by offering his ministry as sacrificial lamb) is Minister Sam Egwu, himself a former governor; boasting profound understanding of the importance of education to Nigeria’s dream of becoming a world leadingn economy by 2020. As much as many may disagree, the twosome have combined finely to use education as a platform for all-round development and many sectors of the economy are already profusely profiting from their stupendous ingenuity. 

The current face-off between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal government was carefully orchestrated to buffer Nigeria’s ailing skilled labour industry. Myopic observers and hurried thinkers may not see the point. But patient, painstaking citizens know that hordes of Nigerian students have been useful as labour reinforcements. Imagine the number of students who, in the last two months, have mastered such arts as hair cutting, shoe making, tailoring and others. Consider also, those who have joined hotels, restaurants, bars etcetera as ‘relief workers’ and it becomes clear that government’s sincere intention is to build a solid artisan base for the labour industry, and that cannot happen with students’ out-of-the-world craze for university education. Yar’Adua’s foresighted administration recognizes the dangers of the neglect of polytechnics, colleges of education and technical colleges and is dead aware employers’ ascription of elevated status to university graduates is as industry-inimical as the public’s belief that technically oriented tertiary institutions are for the poor in intellect. University education must therefore suffer; but the underlying target is not to hurt Nigerians or students, it is to lower university education from its towering status in order that there is a level playing field for all forms of post-secondary school education.

The Nigerian public has not been fair too to Dr. Sam Egwu. Nigerian students have not forgiven him for (in their own thinking) gallivanting the world with no serious reason in particular; celebrating his 25th wedding anniversary while the ASUU-FG war raged on. Media reports merely claimed the silver jubilee, which held at the NICON Hilton, cost the celebrant a princely N120 million, but aggrieved students have stepped out of line, claiming media information were scanty as they were sure the anniversary preparations must have taken him all o’er the globe! But for how long shall we continue to unjustly malign an innocent public servant who understands that virtually all leading education stories in the media are negative and magnanimously thinks he can give suffering students something to be cheerful about? And whether we agree or not, despite all the odds and the criticisms, Dr. Egwu met his target. Even if temporarily, a special joie-de-vivre aura hung over the education ministry as students read and watched their Minister radiate smiles while he hosted a wedding ceremony-like party, at least as a way of encouraging students to expect smiles at the end of their current travail.

Finally, the Federal Government is acting on its realization that the population of Nigerians is beyond the carrying capacity of available natural and, in fact, artificial resources. If we must progress as a people, then some people have to give way. For a government hell bent on achieving success, some people must die; and so the challenge is the best way to get rid of some. But who wants to have blood on his hands? The government has therefore thought that the best way is to allow subjects do the killing while they do the leading. With a crippled education sector, more sectarian crises loom. So education must slip further beyond the reach of the ordinary, those are the ones who should die after all – the hoi polloi. The presidency’s fantastic calculation is hinged on the recent Boko Haram crisis. Members of the group considered as ‘sin’, ‘all forms of western education and western ways’. All we need is a Nigerian state where more and more people consider education as sin, and the killing can continue. The government remains innocent; people die, but those who live experience the change we want and, maybe think we may never have. Again, I must emphasize, the target is not to waste souls. It is to give meaning to life in Nigeria. It is for those of us – or should I say those of you – who survive the well-intended soul loss, to see the earnest realization of the seven-point agenda. The survivors will have access to President Yar’Adua’s electricity promise of 6000MW by December 2009, they will not be haunted by guerilla warfare in the Niger Delta, they will not go through the harrowing experience of watching their votes stolen in ‘do-or-die elections’ as the 2011 elections will be free and fair, periodic fuel increments would belong to the past, hitherto pothole-ridden roads will become motorable, poverty would no longer have meaning, the rich would get richer and the poor would also get richer, industrial actions by labour and trade unions would no longer happen and Nigeria would summarily become heaven on earth.

These are reasons – anything but flimsy – ASUU’s industrial action will continue. These are reasons the Federal Government’s negotiating team will confidently pull out of negotiations with ASUU; reasons the Federal Government will not hurriedly commit itself to an agreement (draft or final) it reached with ASUU since 2001. And as we inch closer to the Promised Land President Yar’Adua is ‘dragging’ us to, we need belief and hope. We must, as a people, believe in our leaders – the Minister and President inclusive – who have in recent times demonstrated commendable abilities to contrive solutions out of the blue, in response to the harshest of ills troubling the Nigerian state. We need hope. Yes, hope; because when realities are extremely, extremely terrible, we cannot cry. We must laugh. When supposed leaders have not even the faintest idea what to do with the future of their followers, we must hope that they are brimming with stunning ideas. When the tragedy of ineffective leadership strikes so hard and the losses seem too many to count, we must hope there are gains in the end, even if such gains can only be conjured!


‘Fisayo studies Animal Science at the University of Ibadan
 

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