Nothing kills productivity and development like politics and unionism. In Nigeria, politics and union are not defined by clear ideology or altruism, but motivated by personal whims and caprices, nothing altruistic. ASUU has extended its strike and the politicians care not because most of them have no personal business with public universities as their wards are walled up in private luxurious universities.
Part of ASUU demands is the absence of infrastructure, but the little existing ones are now left to decay due to the closure of universities. A typical case of robbing Paul to pay Peter.
Ironically, the children of politicians would spend less than four years in the Universities and come take up the jobs that would be vacated by their fathers and mothers while the children of the masses are left at the mercy of ASUU struggle and government insensitivity. ASUU members will little very little, because they will still get their pay for the period they vacated our campuses assignment. ASUU form part of the elite’s circle, their fight is first for self, any other thing is secondary.
Rather than stagnating the progress of students, can’t ASUU be deliberate and face government squarely by refusing to serve as Electoral Officers during elections? By sueing government, by shutting down the three arms of government? Why use students as pawns and choking bargaining chips?
No one is saying ASUU shouldn’t be motivated and their conditions of service bettered but certainly not at the expense of poor students who struggled to raise school fees , pay for accommodation, buy foodstuff and are left to their helpless fate. This is a grieving situation that affects the masses and sustained by two egoistic elites’ contraptions. In the long run, ASUU is holding the knife for the annihilation of public universities in Nigeria.
Frankly musing
Abdullahi O. Haruna
