Hooray! Our dons are at their favorite pastime again — declaring glorious strikes as they are wont to do! (Applause! Applause!)
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), on September 25, issued its latest 14-day ultimatum to declare a strike. Magnanimously, the dons’ 15-day top-up was after an earlier 30-day notice.
The ASUU statement said the deadline was to wean the Federal Government off its delay tactics, over negotiated but inconclusive issues, that drag on and on! Well, you can’t blame the old and tested strikes heroes, can you? This government — indeed every Nigerian government — only understands one language: threat or force!
Still, anyone should be alarmed that an academic union, whose forte should be reason, is always so gung-ho over going on strikes. What do logicians say about threats? Is it not when you’re worsted by facts and logic that you resort to threats?
So, shouldn’t the rest of us be worried that the reflex of Nigeria’s bastion of reason is threat — threat of strikes that yielded pretty little in the past — because their majesties, the dons, couldn’t — and still can’t — think out of the box of ready strikes?
Still, give the devil its due. There are always two sides to a story. In truth, Nigerian governments have not entirely been earnest with ASUU — in negotiations and in implemented agreements — even after ASUU jumbo strikes. That’s to be decried.
But ASUU’s main problem is their infinite faith in strikes — and their pleasure to often weaponize it with gusto — even when its positive impact had been minimal, supremely confident they would get paid for strikes, no matter how long they do.
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Which is why they’d threaten to trot out on another because the Buhari government called their bluff by invoking the no-work-no-pay rule, which by Labour laws is legal and legitimate. Though the Tinubu government compassionately paid part of that unearned money, ASUU would still cite “withheld salaries” as justification! What gracelessness! What rabid fixation!
Talking of fixations, ASUU would stick to “renegotiating” a 2009 agreement, instead of putting forward fresh ideas close to economic realities today? Does that even make sense?
Well, the Federal Government must do its duty; and fairly address ASUU’s grievances. In truth, the government can do far better implementing, to the letter, agreements with the union. But that should start with resisting any agreement it cannot implement, no matter the immediate pressure.
Much more: it should break this sickly cycle of ASUU bully tactics — that brazen right not to work but insist on getting paid. This ruinous strike reflex must stop.
Dons are paid to teach and mould students, not to become vile power and principalities that make youths’ university experience nasty and retard their future.
