With all the clandestine and nocturnal meetings, it has become expedient to swiftly ask whether the ongoing ASUU strike is been championed by a Union with the genuine interest of the education sector or a cult organization aimed at playing politics of some sort. This is so because, the endless midnight meetings that are always kept secret calls for serious concern.
I’m not too sure which to believe as the double facet nature of ASUU continues to baffle me, even as it continues to give some of us nightmare. It is indeed nightmarish to see ASUU playing the devil’s advocate in the ongoing ‘war’.
ASUU appears to some students and other well meaning individuals as a body trying to protect public interest as it relates to the future of our children, meanwhile, it tends to destroy completely the amorphous, yet manageable academic system in the country. But the incontrovertible assertion is that you don’t demolish the hut you live in, when you are still in the process of putting up a mansion. What if you are not able to complete the mansion now? Where will you go? The forest?
So the question is how has the endless strike affected our students positively? How has it affected the country positively? And how has it affected ASUU positively? ASUU has shattered the pedestal completely for keeping students at home for four months, yet there seems to be no hope in view.
Sometimes, I see ASUU as a pressure group with no political interest, but at another point, I see the group as bunch of individuals playing politics with the prospect of our children.
Is ASUU now “Academic Secret Union of Universities?” Why keep what affects the people away from the people? Why will a topical issue, meant to be debated openly be exclusively reserved for the night? It’s only cult groups that hold their meetings at the midnight and in secret venues, especially in the forest. ASUU’s clandestine meetings, especially the last one where they all parked their cars in an open space, boarded another bus to a secret location tells me something wholly different. The message is simple and straight; The Union is gradually becoming a secret society, with top secret matters as subject of discussion. No responsible Union will hold its meeting in the forest and in the dead of the night. No answerable Union will ban journalists from covering what one should ordinarily term a selfless national battle. It’s only an indication that they have a different motive entirely.
Similarly, I have heard of cult groups that fight and never looked back. They don’t give up in their fight because they are all under an oath. It appears ASUU’s oath of brotherhood has handicapped them, as they cannot come to term with the government, even with the latest juicy offer they got. More and more conditions are being churned out for the government to meet before the strike is called off. Would anyone say that this group is interested in protecting the education sector, or just enthusiastically engrossed in satisfying their sponsors and their selfish interest?
No ‘beef’, no ‘bad-blood’ and no ‘badbelle’ against these lecturers, but the truth is that the same teachers who lure female students to bed for mark inflation couldn’t have been so interested in reviving the sector they have already destroyed. The same lecturers who continue to victimize students for not patronizing their text books and handouts couldn’t have sacrificed this much for the system. The same lecturers who go to lecture rooms twice in a semester as they are committed to other businesses couldn’t have woken up one afternoon and begin to advocate for a change, a drastic one for that matter. “We know una nah”
Nigerian students who are gradually losing their sympathy for the Union, are also have been given the bad example on how real cult organizations should operate. Maybe when they get back to school, they will practice what their lecturers have taught them “. Cases of lecturers raping female students in Universities today can no longer shock us. It’s gradually becoming a norm. Cases of lecturers funding cult organizations in universities today cannot be disputed either. It’s rather a case of cultism and not unionism as it appears today. But I will leave that aspect for another day. Sometimes I can’t help, but to ask whether these lecturers really deserve what they are demanding for. Have we even taken a look at the level rots and corruption that this so called union has instituted in our universities today? How come everybody is a graduate, yet everybody cannot read and write? LOl. We are now talking money; what about the moral aspect of the form? Thrown to the wind? Funny people-Naija!
The imperative question is whether these lecturers have any iota of sympathy in them at all. If the government has failed to keep their own part of the agreement 4 years ago, has the same government killed their sensibility that they cannot even be susceptible to the quandary of the students who have remained at home for four months?
We all know that government has to share a larger part of the blame for having stalled the implementation of the agreement, but hasn’t ASUU overreacted? We must blame the government, but we must also tell ASUU the truth. ‘Their own don too much jor’ One wonders what these students are waiting for. You sit down there analyzing ASUU/ Federal Government politics, forgetting that you have the power to call off this strike. Of course, you can order both Federal government and ASUU to call off this strike. Don’t be docile. Use the ‘gutter tactics’ since you have been thrown to the gutter; not even ASUU is your friend. THINK!
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