By Tonnie Iredia
The Nigerian media can hardly be idle because there is always one event or the other begging for media coverage in the country. One body which always makes this possible is the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) – a body which has successfully placed Nigeria ahead of all other countries in the disruption to the academic calendar of universities.

According to records, the Association goes on strike at least once a year. For this year, it is now obvious that last minutes’ efforts to avert a strike, Nigerian Universities are likely from tomorrow Monday, September 26, to be under lock and key again following the decision of ASUU to embark on a warning strike for one week to protest the non- implementation of the agreement it reached with government two years ago.

In the next one week therefore, we are likely to witness once more the vicious cycle of the ‘cat and rat’ game between government and ASUU- a cycle which never changes from the following form: ASUU makes a number of demands from government; the latter accepts some of them after a long drawn out period of negotiations; then both parties sign an agreement on the subject; government in due course fails or refuses to honour its part of the deal; ASUU then proceeds on another long strike which brings to a halt all academic activities leaving students stranded; after a long while, a new agreement is signed and the cycle restarts while we all remain frustrated with a distorted university system.

Although it is obvious that the two parties involved in the game- government and ASUU – are unserious and insensitive to the plight of Nigerians, ASUU appears to be the more naïve of the two parties. First, it relishes agreements with government now and again when it is fully aware that one recurring trait in governments particularly in developing societies is dishonour.

Governments do not deliver on their promises to anyone. Otherwise, 12 years of democracy would not have left us all- ASUU inclusive- in darkness.  Every Nigerian government has always assured its citizens that it would ensure public power supply.

Indeed, the Yar’Adua government went one step ahead of its predecessors who often made vague promises by asserting that it would deliver thousands of electricity megawatts at the end of its first year in office. But at the point of making the promise, officials of that government themselves knew that the game plan was to deceive the people.

They were all aware that it was not really a target which their team honestly intended to achieve. Expectedly, the government of the day like its predecessors had even before the formulation of the policy, rehearsed the arguments it would canvass at the expiration of the fake deadline to justify its premeditated failure.

No matter how weird a promise may look like, politicians are known everywhere to make any type of promise- some can even promise to air-condition all the roads in a village.

For an articulate group like ASUU which should be aware of this to so confidently reach an agreement with government and expect a faithful implementation of it suggests that the Association thinks it is too important to be deceived. The truth however is that government can deceive even itself let alone any group that holds itself in high esteem.

For example, we journalists expect everyone including government to be afraid of us because of the acclaimed overwhelming influence of the media on society. We ascribe to ourselves such titles by which the media are rated in other climes as ‘watch dog, gate keeper and mirror of society’.

In Nigeria however, although government journalists are made to work round the clock, they are paid meager salaries while government reneges, at will, on every agreement it reaches with our unions on our welfare.

We testified in this column previously, Nigerian public broadcasters had to embark on strike actions intermittently for two years, 2005 and 2006, to protest the failure of government to include them in the payment of monetization benefits which other categories of public officers enjoyed as of right two years earlier.

Our two unions – the Radio, Television and Theatre Workers Union (RATTAWU) and the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) cried out loudly but only in vain that government reneged on agreements it reached with them on the subject. Therefore, the failure of government to implement agreements it reached with ASUU cannot make headline news in the media- it is a routine matter.

We are thus free to regard as naïve, the thinking of ASUU that because of the intellectual capacity of its members, government would treat them differently from the rest of us.

Who knows, may be now intellectuals now have ‘brain-fag’ and are therefore unable to assimilate the common sense maxim that ‘once beaten twice shy’ In the last two years that the current bone of contention has been on ground, ASUU has been beaten more than 4 times without being shy on any of the occasions! Meanwhile, the Association has not been imaginative enough to change its modus operandi.

Going on strike every other day which has yielded no dividends continues to be its preferred strategy to press home its demands. Unfortunately, each time it does, the casualty is always the student-body, the children of the ordinary man; neither the people in government nor their children who are in schools abroad are affected.

It is thus time for someone to tell ASUU that its unending cat and rat game with government as it concerns innocent stud
ents amounts to ‘transferred malice’. Now that we are in a democracy where the rule of law is supposed to prevail, ASUU should rely more on the legal provisions on trade disputes in Nigeria.

Nothing stops it from getting a court order to compel government to honour its promise and implement a documented agreement.

Somehow, something curious appears echoing against the backdrop of the following posers:  First, if the military and other former leaders did not listen to ASUU, may be they hate intellectuals but is it not nosy that the situation has remained the same under Presidents Yar ’Adua and Jonathan, former members of ASUU?

Second, since universities are generally known to be ill-equipped, why did government embark on opening new ones instead of consolidating the existing ones- why is ASUU not on strike on that? Could it be that some ASUU leaders are aiming at becoming Vice Chancellors in the new institutions?

Third, by insisting that Professors must serve till they are 70 years old, has ASUU averted its mind to the fact that such a policy cannot rejuvenate the academic class? Who says Professors would necessarily be more useful after the age of 65? Even if it is so, would it really apply to every Professor? If not, why can’t any ‘indispensable’ academic continue to serve as ‘Professor emeritus’?

In fairness however, this is not the time to rationalize claims- it is implementation time but will it happen?