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Analysis:ASUU and FG’s error
of judgment
By Jim Pressman
Newsdiaryonline Sun Dec 11,2011
President Jonathan
It is
amazing how short people’s memories can get, especially in
Nigeria and most particularly when they have tasted power at any
level of national life.Otherwise, how else could one even begin to explain the
perennial ASUU strike to press home the need for successive
Federal administrations in Nigeria since the late 1980s to put
their money where their mouths are as it were, and keep their
own promises to adequately fund university education, if only,
then, to halt the Brain Drain which had spiraled to ridiculous
levels…
The
famous
2001 Agreement
between ASUU leadership and the Federal Government, which
everybody has since been referring to, many a Minister before
have denied the existence of, and which nobody seems to recall
who exactly asked who to sign, who
did on whose behalf, and oh! many other questions as to where
there had been a written commitment o both sides to implement
the letters of the agreement or not, simply make one sick of the
amount of shamelessness displayed by people in government in
Nigeria!
At first
the FG tried in vain to make ASUU members look like a bunch of
over-pampered and comfortably accommodated campus brats, who
never tire of asking for more, like the proverbial Oliver Twist.
Soon, however, the students who alongside their poor parents
always bear the brunt of perennial shutdowns in the ill-equipped
tertiary instructions, some of which had been reduced to
glorified high schools anyway, saw reason with their persecuted
teachers and pitched their tents with hem, against a Federal
Government whose officials speak through both sides of their
mouths without shame.
Government finally capitulated and re- negotiated some of the
original clauses, and managed to get a patriotic ASUU leadership
under Dr. Dipo Fashina, to agree to “take it from there.” Ever
since, however, Minister after Minister, even ‘Aunty’ Ruqquayat
Rufa’i who is a mother
herself, and must feel what other parents feel except of course
like most of them, she has sent her own children abroad, all
without exception have tried to fool the public that there are
‘grey areas’ still, in the old agreement.
A
government which finds time and money to found by fiat 9 new,
‘political universities’ and does nothing to stop states which
are yet to find enough candidates to fill their fallow quotas in
the existing ones to open their own state universities, Methinks
ought to have first considered the long – standing demand for
adequate funding and equipment of the existing institutions,
first.
Our
lawmakers, with all due respect to a few pro-intellectual ones
who have managed to keep their heads in the hail of unimagined
Ghana-must go loads of cash accruing, seem to have joined the
top FG functionaries, many of them ex-ASUU members and
professors …in a Pact of Perfidy
against education in Nigeria and the otherwise bright future of
children of the ordinary Nigerian.
It must
be said that the failure of governments to meet
ASUU’s
demands
while wishing that the
issues will just fade away unattended
to ,remains a big error
of judgment. Until Nigerian governments regain their sense of
shame and learn to keep promises and respect agreements, let the
Universities remain closed.Sadly this recurring strike may
let the Boko Haram find more recruits just as
the now virtually
licenced cultists and
and disillusioned male undergraduates
will continue to swell
the ranks of the army of armed robbers, while the young ladies
make the evenings of lecherous top shots in Abuja’s Gardens and
the hotels in other cities of this so-called Giant of Africa …
God forbid!
Related
Jonathan appeals to ASUU : Go
back to the classroom
Th
This is the document referred to in the Witness
Statement on Oath of Clifford O. Kokogho as
“Exhibit
COK.2”
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