FG vs. ASUU: Adamu Adamu, NANS Crackpotitude and the Slippery Slope of Politics

By OM’ERANMUKAANDU

Let me say that I am not being partisan in coming up with this, I am only being patriotic and objective as much as possible. My assessment is that it was, and still is, very sad and unfortunate that Nigeria and Nigerians woke up to the surreal reality of the election of the All Progressives Congress, APC in 2015 as the party to replace the extinction-bound People’s Democratic Party, PDP. Never in the history of this country has the fortune of the once most powerful nation in Africa been held hostage by a venerable cohort of politicians whose agenda were brazenly apparent yet incongruitously inescapable! The nation’s fortune has since then dipped, her glory immersed in the slippery slope of inhuman politics versus the palm oil and the stony ground. This is the reality of Idaamu, the suffering or crisis of Adamu Adamu.

Yorubas are wont to say ‘Epo ni mo ru, oniyangi ma ba t’emi je’. In the words of Festus Adedayo: This literally translates to mean, anyone who shoulders a heavy gallon of palm oil should avoid the destructive tendency of the stone-laced ground he walks upon. (August 1, 2022). The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, can be likened to that person who bears the heavy gallon of palm oil on its head, being the umbrella body of intellectuals who work for both the federal and state governments of Nigeria in their tertiary institutions while Nigeria stands for the stone-laced ground upon which we walk as academics.

That the PDP drove Nigeria to this point is not debatable. But no doubt the nation has had the bad luck of being under the vice-like grip of an APC administration whose hallmarks remain insensitivity, aloofness and incompetence demonstrated in the last seven years, in all spheres of our national life. Coming on board with the fallacious mantra of ‘CHANGE’, the people have been deceived beyond measure from an assessment of happenings over the past 84 months. The re-election campaign incantation of ‘NEXT LEVEL’ from the ruling party yet caught the nation napping and today, we are all, or mostly praying for a way of escape from the abysmal level the ruling oligarchs have sunk our dear fatherland.

No aspect of our national life has been spared from or inoculated against the Virus of Anomie gnawing away at our collective psyche and commonwealth. What with daily breaking news of termites, snakes and monkeys eating humongous amounts of public funds while the tertiary education system is wailing and bleeding. That is why ASUU has been on strike since the 1980s, like a Seer and his voice crying in the wilderness, ‘Repent ye now, for the kingdom of God is at hand’! But the people refused to listen and hearken but rather chose to go as willing brides with the political class whose stock-in-trade are lies and deceit. Had the nation hearkened the lone voice calling them out on redemption, our children would not have been home in the last six months due to the crackpotitude, crass incompetence and insensitivity of an administration that came with a load of promises which it had tipped into Atlantic with its own vehicle, without blinking.

The mandate of ASUU primarily is to fight for and promote the welfare of its members. But as a group of patriotic Nigerians, the Union places more premium on issues of national and collective importance above the interests of its members, who are sworn like the military, to defend the academic rights of all citizens to quality education and the territorial integrity of their institutions. Where is integrity when the proprietors of public schools refuse to honour their responsibilities to thei own patrimony? This and more ASUU has taken up over the years, carefully carrying the populace along on this journey and selfless campaign, at the risk of personal injury and injustice to its members. Successive administrations before the current one have always seen reason to up the ante, whenever ASUU embarked on strike as the last option in the struggle for a better fortune for tertiary education. But the unyielding nature of the present crop of Apostles of Prognostic Capitulation, APC, has left everyone wondering whether they actually belong to this country.

Allowing an industrial action to linger for this long is unfathomable. We have lived with enemies of education without seeing through their motive. Determined to capture Nigerian youths in the same manner of his Decree No. 2 of 1984, this administration was enthroned blindly, under the influence of hypnosis. With its lies and deceit, it has befuddled the consciousness of almost the entire population, making them to believe that education is Haram, that is, a sin. The Honourable Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, with his declaration in his press conference on Thursday 18 August, 2022 sounded the knell for this by saying that his Principal, Muhammadu Buhari has refused to pay the striking lecturers for the period the strike lasted as if we have suspended the action. The hypnosis which affected the reasoning of majority of Nigerians cannot catch ASUU members. We are immune from certain diseases that afflict or are foisted by an evil administration. For the benefit and sake of the University system, we gave our today. We have endured the untold humiliation of receiving amputated and inhuman salaries in the face of rising cost of living for upwards of 13 years! And the only response by government is that it is “Awarding” and offering us a miserable N30, 000-N60, 000 graduated increase on salaries, payable from next year.

Does it then mean that all these months, we have been made to waste the future of our children and colleagues who are students for a mere pittance of a wage? While government remains mum on other issues on ASUU’ demands list? Are we victims of the Buharia hypnosis and hypocrisy now? Are these children and their parents, which include many of us, going to bless us and pray for us any longer? Supposing we return to the classrooms, are we going to have the moral justification to face these students and teach them well? These and more are the germane questions for all to help us answer, in the face of government’s decision not to implement ANY of the resolutions but defer same till 2023. Does it make sense? When it knew this was going to be its final answer, why did this administration not put these offers on the table within the first 48 hours of the strike in February 2022? After our Union showed goodwill by suspending the previous action in December 2020, based on the trust that the Memorandum of Action, MoA signed by both parties would be respected and implemented forthwith, this is all we have been offered, when we could have averted this catastrophic outcome. This is indeed the tale of ‘oniyangi ma ba t’emi je!

But we are resolute. If it means we will have to fall back on Prof. Wole Soyinka’s suggestion in the late 80s for the shutting down of all universities for a period during which abounding solutions will be recommended and implemented, so be it. From between three to five years, let all universities be shut down and staff placed on half salaries. Let the National Economic Council convene both an Economic Summit for the education system as the loudest hue, cry and proposal has been for the financial independence of the institutions from many stakeholders over the last six months. The president has not listened to the admonitions of many groups of stakeholders in this matter, which lends credence to the suspicions that he is running a Boko Haram campaign against education in the country. The Committee of Vice Chancellors, religious leaders and groups, the organised labour, parents under the aegis of the National Association of Parents Teachers of Nigeria, NAPTAN, students under their various platforms, the NANS president who needs to be educated all over again to desist from crackpotitude, etcetera, etcetera. This stone-deaf, stone-cold, stone-faced government, standing on stone-laced ground has finally killed and buried education the future of development in Nigeria.

It remains the right of workers to demand for improvements in their welfare and work environment. But that has become a curse for Nigerian University lecturers. May be the mistake we have made was not heeding the wise counsel and clarion call of a former Vice Chancellor of one of the federal universities, Prof. Tukur Saad (rd.) who has been trending with his testimony of how he saved money for his successor, bla, bla, bla. This man is just blowing shashi and crackpot for nothing. He has forgotten that the time when he was VC was different from now. And beheading can never be the cure for headache. He left office with a severance allowance. He is on government patronage even today, having served as Chairman of the Visitation Panel to the University of Lagos. He forgets that exercise is a 5-yearly recommendation of the same ASUU that he vilifies today!

Every day, Salaries and Allowances of those polithievians and legislooters are being reviewed upwards secretly. Same for members of the Armed Forces and other sectors like Aviation, etc. Railways workers, Refinery workers, Steel companies workers who have not worked in more than 30 years are being paid, with Gratuities worked out and given to those who attain retirement age. Why? Moribund institutions get largesse from the FG. Contractors fleece the country dry. But lecturers do not deserve decent wages, abi? Constituency Projects Allowances are paid to NASS members yet we don’t see any projects as they hardly return to their constituents while their tenure in Abuja lasts. So, my colleagues and I in the universities are the Casualties!!! No way! It is Idaamu Adamu and he will bear it alone.

Trillions of Naira of taxpayers’ money have been reportedly wasted on fighting nebulous insecurity in the country, without any appreciable results in the last 17 years. Why? Because it is the shares of the National Cake for the people in power! Even when a probe was instituted into the scam, and a few Nigerians were found guilty, what has happened to them till date? Fuel subsidy payment has become the exclusive bazzar of the federal government and its NNPC. But no budgetary allocation is made for our public universities. As at December 2020, the federal government gave ASUU a promise that its Re-Negotiation Committee was going to conclude its assignment within two weeks. It never materialised, true to the government antics and modus operandi since 2015. Even the Earned Academic Allowances, EAA which balance stood at N85 billion as at that date has not been settled. Is this not tantamount to Idaamu Adamu, the presiding bishop of the education ministry?

A Memorandum of Action, MoA, was signed in February 2019 with our Union. Up till this moment, government has not summoned the political will to demonstrate fidelity to its own initiative and Special Purpose Vehicle of the final resolution of the incessant crisis. Adamu Adamu never raised a finger to ensure that this is followed up. He gave room for other busy body Ministers to hijack the matter from him. Now, like the bishop has woken up from his slumber and upturned the apple cart against himself. And the gallon of palm oil came careering down the slippery slope of politics. Only Providence can save the situation from further degenerating into a full-blown Idaamu.

Ley the Pro-Chancellors demonstrate their pro-active disposition to the University system next week Tuesday when they meet their principal. Some of them are very senior former colleagues who could never have amounted to anything without the University and ASUU. Ditto the Vice Chancellors. I remind them that ASUU remains the only Union that is not lickspittle to the government. Neither are we crackpots or suffering from crackpotitude of the present administration. Time will vindicate us.

(OM’ERANMUKAANDU is the pseudonym of Comrade Prof. ‘Diran Ademiju-Bepo, former Vice Chairman, and Immediate Past Acting Chairman of ASUU, University of Jos branch)

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FG vs. ASUU: Adamu Adamu, NANS Crackpotitude and the Slippery Slope of Politics