Put ASUU matter to rest

For more than one year, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has been grappling with the nightmare of eight months withheld salaries following last year’s strike. It’s a miracle that after that assault on their psyche they still remain sane. Consider the progression of the assault, then reflect on the outcome, and then make up your mind. Firstly, the strike was about more than a decade of unfulfilled promises and broken agreements signed by the federal government. It was not ASUU that broke agreements. The strike then dragged on for about eight months. Secondly, the government disregarded its own part of the blame and decided, because it had the power and the purse string, to punish ASUU for feeling short-changed. Salaries were thus withheld.

Thirdly, the government also encouraged a splinter union, the Congress of University Academics (CONUA), to be carved out of ASUU on the pretext of ASUU’s unreasonableness in pursuing its rights or being too rigid in demanding respect for agreements. Effortlessly, right became wrong. Still sane? Then consider this final detail. Both President Bola Tinubu, who was then candidate for presidential election, and Chief of Staff to the President Femi Gbajabiamila, who was then Speaker of the House of Representatives did their utmost to broker a truce between the warring teachers and the presidency, but failed. Both are now in office. Last year they did the talking, but this year they could, if they choose, walk the talk. So far they have not. So ASUU is still holding the short end of the stick, is blamed by the public for the long and debilitating strike, has endured a traumatic splintering of the union, and is still eight months short on their wages.

It is not even clear anymore whether anyone understands the issues at play, or how to define academic work: whether it comprises only teaching or it combines so much more, including research and projects supervision, among others. Everyone knows that the last administration had little regard for education. The new administration claims to regard it with awe. If it won’t or can’t walk its talk, then it should at least come out and defend the iniquitous decision to punish the teachers on multiple fronts. Perhaps they can convince the public that the sun revolves around the earth after all. If that is the case, the teachers, it is guaranteed, will gladly denounce Copernicus and charge Galileo with the intellectual crime of suspected, rather than formal, heresy.