Hardball is often torn between frustration and pity for President Goodluck Jonathan. Frustration because he cannot seem to get the country going and pity because though he means well, in his incapacitation, he cannot muster the requisite acuity, charm and even wiles to cut through crap and get the kind of critical results that define administrations. Few examples will help explain. In the Boko Haram affair, it took him an age to understand that the very sovereignty of Nigeria was being threatened and there was an urgent need to stem the insurgence. But he has been incapable of doing the needful and Nigeria has continued to be held by scruff of her shirt by a band of desert militia men.
Another example is the oil industry (including the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB) which has been in the mire since he took office. Now remember that this is Nigeria’s most strategic asset which ought to be the president’s top priority. But what do we have? A rotten state oil corporation; comatose refineries; fraudulent products import scheme; mindboggling fuel subsidy scandal and suddenly, oil theft racket. Nigerians don’t hear any good news anymore from our most prized sector. One can mention half a dozen other telling instances of k-legged inertia but what is the point?
Back to ASUU, the issue of the day which is a raging example of presidential doodling, one is pained that Goodluck Jonathan could not gather up all the presidential powers at his disposal to break the six-month old impasse. The Academic Staff Union of Universities has been on a protracted strike. When it seemed all had failed, the president intervened personally, sitting through several meetings with senior members of ASUU executives. The last meeting reportedly lasted 13 hours yet came to naught. This has, apparently, enraged the president who in obvious frustration, reached for the rod: return to work or get sacked. But Hardball must advise that force and violence are the tools of stupid and cowardly people. They are, of course, not instruments for construction.
Constructive engagement has been thrown out the window in place of arm-twisting, threats and blackmail. In a barrage of propaganda, ASUU leaders are being painted as recalcitrant, as saboteurs and enemies of Jonathan. Some columnists (some of who carry the tag of ‘professor’) make such loose argument that ASUU ought to go back to work just because of the fact that it sat at a meeting with the president for 13 hours. What did the president offer anew? It is calamitous, to say the least that Jonathan could not wring out some agreement from the lecturers at this critical moment in this ASUU affair; we had hoped that he wouldn’t fail after all else had failed.
Hardball could have thrown in the entire country (including ASUU) if that was what it required; if he had it to do. And for heavens sake where is the presidential chutzpah? If the salaries of the last four months were the issue, the president could have ordered it paid immediately. Everything but trying to force the lecturers back to the classrooms would have been smarter.
And whose advice was it to draw a line in the sand with the lecturers? Who thought it through? It is obvious that the Education Minister, Nyeson Wike is out of his depth here. He simply lacks the capacity to handle this one. Being a political weasel, he would insist and advise accordingly that ASUU members are ‘political enemies’ and that instantly drains the matter of all logic. But ASUU has a good case, they are simply asking government to live up to one of its promise and responsibilities; that is not too much to ask.
As you read this, the lecturers would have defied the ultimatum of the presidency; the president has bungled it all up once again.
