By Yinka Aderibigbe
It is day 74 of ASUU strike.
May the Lord deal with both parties in this crisis in equal measure, what they are doing to the future of this country. This Abè mágbô and Agbó mágbà duel is hurting and frustrating the average Nigerian family.
The way ASUU is dragging this matter soon, they will lose all goodwill and credibility. Nigerians are beginning to ask, is anyone forcing you to teach? Is it patriotism that kept you glued to the ivory towers? If it’s not lucrative, why not look for other chummy sector and stop killing our future with your corrosive energy?
If your predecessors as lecturers or as ASUU officials collapsed the ivory towers in their times and days, will you be opportune to lay any claim to scholarship? Why this?
You’ve made your case ASUU, and Nigerians have seen you’ve advocated tenuously. Common sense will dictate that the best is to suspend this fight?
Must we drag this current hiatus into another nineth month like your immediate predecessor? Or you wish to shatter that all time high record, and take this to perhaps the 10th or the 11th or the 12th month? What record are you angling for Mr ASUU President?
This administration is presently winding down and what best pointer do you need to see than the fact that all the actors are presently hustling and positioning for the next government?
In other words, ASUU would be hypocritical to think it can extract anything from this set of leaders at this time when the buzz of politics is very high. The fact is that ASUU need not delude itself to think that this is the best time to take the nation to ransom. Doing that would be crass and cheap and will not depict the union as being home to the best brains comparable anywhere in terms of strategy and tact. So far, ASUU has disappointed greatly that it cannot do more than willfully resort to wasting the time and lives of innocent Nigerians and prey on the parents who are in the same shoes as these lecturers are anytime they have issues to grind with the government.
ASUU is too serious a union to become the butt of beer parlour jokes. The present leaders should be mindful of the image of the union and what will be lost if it is dragged in the mud and becomes completely toothless.
Perhaps the more pertinent question to ask is what is the worth of your fight when it aimed at completely demarketing the public universities? Has the truth in the saying that nobody prices you beyond your self worth, lost its worth?
What is the essence of your agitation when parents are leaving the public universities that trained you all your members and start patronising private universities, many of which are unrated and cannot qualify for anything in terms of depth and intellectual prowess? What will be your gain when you wake up suddenly tomorrow to see that there’s no student to teach anymore? What will be your legacy Mr President? What will your successors fight for when you have wasted the goodwill and crashed the roof on our heads?
We are not fooled if you think we believe you will ever win this round with this set of leaders that we have. You may not. We have seen that both of you are wearied already. And it is not for the fun of it that it is said, he that fights and run away live to fight another day. How I wish ASUU do not waste any more days on this set of leaders. How I wish that they save their war till another day when a more serious set of leaders who understands what they are agitating for would come on stage. An administration that would be determined and have the will to change the system may not be long in coming, with the level of awareness in the polity presently. It will be sad and a grievous tragedy if ASUU by its own wits, destroy itself and eroded it’s goodwill before that tomorrow comes. Again I ask ASUU, the wages of Aseju or Alaseju in the Yoruba cosmos is heavy and unbecoming. Wasting the future and growth of the nation’s youths at will is a price too high to pay by this innocent ones whose sin is that of being born in a heartless era such as this. Aaya nsare, Oobe nsare, oju oloko re kandu-kandu. Don’t even ask me to interpret that because I may not be able to proffer the simplest of similitude.
Enough please. Enough. In the interest of all.