Suddenly, all sorts of people are barring their fangs on the Academic Staff of Nigerian Universities (ASUU) for sticking to its guns; as well as expressing disbelief that the latter boxed government into a tight corner from which it extracted an incredible deal. Suddenly, the pen has transformed into a malignant proboscis sucking the blood of the teachers’ union for holding government by the balls. Yet, everyone knows that it is an uphill task, sometimes bordering on outright rebellion, to secure any pragmatic concessions from political administrations in developing nations such as Nigeria. People have forgotten so soon what it cost Nigerians – organised labor, civil society groups, including the Save Nigeria Group, (SNG) – to battle the Jonathan government over the other January arbitrary hike in the prices of petroleum products in the name of oil subsidy removal. At the end of the day, the near civil rebellion posture of the SNG and the other forces at work in that crisis opened a Pandora’s box – which showed clearly to the world how the average Nigerian is made to suffer for financial crimes perpetrated by state actors and their collaborators. Unfortunately, in seeking to indict ASUU and representatives of the Federal Government – FG – for the recent peace offer of N40 billion out of the N90 billion agreed to by both parties, many failed victims of the Conspiracy Doctrine of Ignorance and have ended up indicting themselves. Senator David Mark, Senate President, and Mr. Labaran Maku, Information Minister, are two state actors who unleashed their venom on ASUU, the FG negotiators, and the pact signed by both parties. From the way they spoke, they were the ones who probably advised the FG, wrongly of course, to apply the old strong arm tactic of withholding the lecturers’ salaries in the last three or four months, as a way of forcing them back to the classrooms. Now, ego problem has set in to complicate matters; and since government would not want to be disgraced, it may ultimately break the strike, but end up making the situation worse. If government succeeds in breaking the strike without reaching amicable settlement with the teachers’ union, good quality lecturers may resign their appointments and seek employment elsewhere in protection of their integrity. This is the sort of insidious damage that unguarded state actors, like Mark and Maku, would unwittingly wreak on the already parlous education system in the country. In all of this, it is the students – children of the lecturers as well as children of ordinary Nigerians and the entire nation’s social fabric – that will suffer. In stating that ASUU took advantage of ignorant FG negotiators in extracting an impossible deal from the FG, Senator Mark gave the impression that the FG drafted nincompoops to negotiate on its behalf with ASUU. That, I think, is uncharitable, if not reckless, coming from the number three citizen of the country, and judging from the calibre of persons in the FG Team that negotiated and endorsed the pact on behalf of government. At the Chair of the negotiating team on the FG side was the boardroom legend, Deacon Gamaliel Onosode, renown, for his clinical thoroughness and fastidiousness in official matters. Other members of the negotiating team on both sides were cerebral and accomplished professors and technocrats from diverse callings. Yet, our distinguished, most sensible, and allknowing Senate President just became aware of the content of the contentious Agreement that has been in the front burner since 2009, re-negotiated in 2012, only when Senator Uche Chukwumerije read it out on the floor of Senate! How very knowledgeable, how very caring and how very concerned about the students and the nation’s educational system! It is better to know nothing than to know little. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing and it is very distressing. For, in the distressing scenario that one knows when, indeed, one does not know, ignorance is compounded into public statements and policy. How very socially and very politically very dangerous to know very little and be in charge! Here, ignorance is not just due to a mere lack of knowledge, but a conspiracy to refuse to confront the brutal facts, a stubborn vow and a pact with demons of ignorance to resist true knowledge. Now, as to the matter of the so-called impossible demands of ASUU, if government fails to do what it has agreed is in the public good and enters into a contractual obligation to execute the pact whenable, there comes a time when the powerless assert their powers, and it will appear as if there has been an over-kill. There has been an incremental and disregarded accumulation of earned allowances and the backlash is glaringly evident in the mediocrity that is gradually inexorably creeping into the educational system. They say you cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs. The condiments of a delicious pot of soup cost money to procure. Good quality education costs a lot of money to bequeath to a nation and its people. We cannot continue to pay lip service to what is valuable without making concrete effort to put it in place. If it is not too much to build an official residence for a Senate President with N2 billion of public money where it will take only 45 such Senate Presidents to exhaust N90 billion, what is N90 billion computed as three-year accumulated earned allowances of all staff in Nigerian public universities? Or is it because university lecturers are involved that it has become sacrilegious to contemplate of and speak in billions and trillions? About the billions involved in the ASUU-FG Agreement for the functional upgrading of public universities, another contentious issue in regard to the quantum of fund to be disbursed at some intervals, have not all complained and openly decried the dilapidated state of educational infrastructure in the nation’s universities, and is this to be made good by accepting a disbursement methodology that would ultimately not address the infrastructure deficit in contention? Labaran Maku’s statement that the negotiators of the 2009 ASUU-FG Agreement and its 2012 re-negotiated version did not know the cost implications of the earned allowances that has totalled N90 billion in three years for all the public university staff, is a professional communicator’s way of saying, like Mark, that ignoramuses negotiated the contentious agreement. In this, I am equally at a loss how the cost implications of the accumulated quantum of people’s earned allowances could become an issue in insisting that the entitlements be paid, when the delay in payment was not the fault of the payee? Notwithstanding, my plea is that ASUU should accept what is offered, keep track of the outstanding payments, call off the strike and get the students back to the classrooms....#good morning#
Posted on: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 04:26:24 +0000
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