News analysis: ASUU vs FG: Two elephants punishing students, parents

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on Monday decided to ‘roll over’ a one-month old warning strike it declared on February 14 to protest the failure of the Federal Government to meet some of its demands.

ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, after an emergency meeting of the union’s National Executive Council (NEC) in Abuja, said the extension of the strike became inevitable because government has not shown any commitment to meet their demands.

“Having taken reports on the engagements of trustees and principal officers with the government, the union concluded that government had failed to satisfactorily address all the issues raised in the 2020 FGN/ASUU Memorandum of Action (MoA) within the four-week roll-over strike period and resolved that the strike be rolled over for another eight weeks to give government more time to address all the issues in concrete terms so that our students will resume as soon as possible,” Prof. Osodeke said.

ASUU’s position to continue with the strike has not gone down well with many Nigerians, more so, when the union just resumed in September last year after a nine-month strike over the same issue.

Many are also wondering why the union see a three-month strike as a warning strike, in which case, you are almost wasting a whole academic calendar.

President of the National Parents-Teachers Association of Nigeria (NAPTAN), Alhaji Haruna Danjuma, said the incessant strikes by ASUU members were becoming very frustrating for both parents and students.

According to him, ASUU and the government can resolve their disagreements without necessarily inflicting pains on students.

He said: “The strikes are making youths lose faith in education and consequently take to negative vices that may compromise their future. This development is dangerous to us as a nation. It does not speak well of us as a nation that truly desires accelerated development and transformation.

“Government should tackle this issue. It must go to work, and quickly too, to revisit whatever demands the lecturers are making.”

Many Nigerians are also aghast about the insensitivity of ASUU to the plight of their students. In the last couple of years, Nigerian students have been spending more time out of the university campus than inside the classroom. This has ensured that a four-year programme takes five or even six years to complete in some cases.

Most parents, who can afford it, now prefer sending their wards to private universities, or to some cheap universities abroad, because the union is seen as taking Nigerians hostage. Instead of fighting for the poor masses as ASUU is claiming, Nigerians now see the union as holding them to ransom, inflicting more pains on them, because only the children of the poor are attending public universities.

“Why should strike be the first option over the years? ASUU, to me, has lost it. Lobbying is key to get government’s buy in on certain issues. Lobbying works best when you have your people in the same government. 

“Son of man believes that we currently have more former ASUU members in government today than at any other period in Nigeria’s short history. And, I mean, at the federal level. Why is it that things have refused to change and ASUU continues to deploy the same old tactics of strike?

“The Federal Government has NEVER lost anything from the incessant strikes by ASUU. The losers have always been students and their parents. Meanwhile, the same ASUU leaders will claim they are fighting for the masses.

“Maybe we should go the way of Margaret Thatcher and outlaw ASUU. We can even make sure lecturers who want to work can resume without being disturbed. The many strikes by ASUU is like an organisation bent on destroying the future of our young ones,” Wale Adedayo, a journalist and now chairman of a local government in Ogun State, wrote.

Unlike before, the union no longer draws sympathy from Nigerians. ASUU’s incessant strike is killing public universities, some said, while others accused some of the lecturers of being on the payroll of private universities.

Many others may have also taken up teaching or other appointments online and so, care less about how long the strike lasts.

ASUU needs to go back to the drawing board. It is obvious that its current approach is not working. The leadership of the union must find a better way of engaging with the Federal Government over the rot in our tertiary education. The students are suffering; the parents are not happy. Then, who gains and at whose expense is ASUU’s strike?