Adesina Wahab

The National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, on Tuesday, said Nigerians should not see the ravaging novel Coronavirus as a disease for only the rich and therefore gloat over the plight of the people that have contracted it.

He also warned against having a false sense of immunity against the disease.

He stated these during the formal launch and the presentation of the COVID-19 Intervention Materials and Sensitisation Programme at the University of Ibadan.

Ogunyemi noted that since Nigerians live in a shared community with many points of intersection, whatever affects an individual could also become a lot of others around him.

He said: “The new pandemic, the coronavirus, has awakened our common humanity nationally and internationally. It has suddenly dawned on us all – the rich and the poor, the high and the low – that we are interconnected, and we either face our challenge in togetherness or we sink together.

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“Contrary to the misconception out there that COVID-19 is a disease of the big people, we live in a shared community with many points of intersection – drivers and car owners, housekeepers and masters/mistresses, school teachers and parents, university students and professors, etc. Pretending to be safe when the lives of others with whom we come into regular contacts are endangered is just playing the ostrich.

“The truth is: we are not safe, physically, socially or epidemiologically, until others around us are free from the decapitating effects of COVID-19 and other afflictions. Rising to prevent and control the spread is, therefore, not just a matter of duty but the logical demand of our desire to live!”

He expressed sadness that the pandemic had exposed the deterioration in the nation’s tertiary health institutions, adding that the union’s call for better funding of the education sector should now be better understood by the authorities.

“For us in ASUU, this is not an occasion for blame game or buck-passing. However, it calls for sober reflection on what we need to do differently with our health and education. We talk of our health because that holds the key to our wealth, and our education because, without it, we are going nowhere in the advancement ladder among the comity of civilized nations. With a qualitative and accessible university education, we can guarantee a storehouse of knowledge in scientists, doctors, nurses, laboratory technologists and other medical and paramedical personnel for coping with a global pandemic of the magnitude of the COVID-19.

“But it appears our universities have no place in the current efforts of the government.  Even with all the support, a functional healthcare system is only evidence of a delectable educational menu serviced by contented academics and scholars at its zenith. See, for instance, how naked and empty our teaching hospitals turned out to be when threatened by the early wave of COVID-19.

“Yet, these are laboratories established to produce medical and paramedical personnel for our dear nation! Our aspiration for improved quality of life for Nigeria’s teeming population will remain a mirage for as long as the ruling class cannot see the ineluctable consequences of the neglect of university education for qualitative health services,” the ASUU chief concluded.

Vanguard