By Charles Okoh
From February 14, 2022 till September, our university students have been at home; meaning that for close to eight months that critical population of the nation’s demography has been kept idle and indolent. Indolent not because they are lazy as President Muhammadu Buhari once described them, but because they have been rendered so by a government that does not care a hoot how the people feel about the effect of their misgovernance and utter indifference to the plight of the people.
Last Monday, passengers travelling from Lagos to other states
and other countries from the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) were
stranded and some missed their flights as the National Association of Nigerian
Students blocked all roads leading to the airport. The students who came out in
their numbers protested over the lingering strike by the Academic Staff Union
of Universities (ASUU).
One of the protesting students puts it more succinctly when he said they want to prevent the elite from flying just so that their attention can be drawn to their plights. He believed it was a welcome development to curb the excesses of the government’s nonchalant attitude towards university education in the country.
Meanwhile, while our students took to the streets to disrupt the
movement of not just the political elite they aimed as targets, they also
disrupted the activities of many ordinary Nigerians like them who were also to
travel using the airport. But anything that ought to be done to bring this
misfiring government to think and act and finally bring this embarrassing
strike to an end should be done and would be considered fair.
The most anonymous and conspicuously irrelevant public office
holder while this strike has lasted remains the minister of education. I can’t
recall any reasonable statements coming from this fellow, yet the Buhari
administration has retained him and as it is, he will keep his job until the
end of this administration. Talk about rewarding failure!
And for about eight months, neither the vice president nor the
president has considered it important and expedient enough to take charge of
this embarrassing episode. Why would they? Afterall Osinbajo and Buhari both
have their children educated abroad.
The Buhari’s government disdain for our local institutions does
not stop with education; the president has never been pictured all through his
about eight-year reign in any public hospital in Nigeria. He travels out of the
country for the slightest of infirmities.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I do not care if anybody chooses to
educate his children abroad or decides to travel abroad to treat flu, my angst
remains with the fact that they do this while completely ignoring to make these
institutions at home work for the rest of the population to benefit from.
As though they want to completely rub it in, last week the
president’s wife photos trended on the social media with her daughter-in-law
graduating from a university in the UK. They had no qualms whatsoever that the
mass population of unfortunate fellow Nigerians whose children are daily being
exposed to the vagaries and vicissitude of an uncertain future and the allure
to crime as a result of being idle, feel offended by their insensitive action.
Meanwhile, a federal government that has never hidden its
disregard for the courts and their rulings, especially in the cases which do
not go in their favour, filed for an interlocutory order to compel ASUU to
return to the classroom.
In its ruling of last Wednesday, the National Industrial Court,
NIC, Abuja, ordered ASUU to call off its strike. The court made the order
in a ruling that was delivered by Justice Polycarp Hamman.
FG’s lawyer, Mr. James Igwe had prayed the court to order the
striking varsity lecturers to in the interim, to return to work, pending the
determination of the substantive suit before the court. He maintained that the
matter was not only urgent, but of a great national interest as millions of
students have been at home for over seven months.
Igwe said there was need for the matter to be expeditiously
determined to enable university students to return to school, adding that
failure to call off the strike would cause irreparable damage to not only the
students but also to the nation.
While dismissing objections ASUU raised through its lawyer, Mr
Femi Falana, SAN, the court held that the strike action was detrimental to
public university students that cannot afford to attend private tertiary
institutions.
The court, thereafter, issued an order, restraining ASUU,
“whether by themselves, members, agents, privies or howsoever called, from
taking further steps and doing any act in continuance of the strike action,
pending the hearing and determination of the suit filed.”
Meanwhile, ASUU had revealed that it was going to appeal the
judgement.
An agreement signed and agreed upon with timelines was not
adhered to by the government. We all looked on and carried on as though the cry
by the association on the worsening state of the nation’s universities does not
matter to the government. While the government has been crying of dwindling
revenue over the years, that has not stopped it from throwing money away abroad
in the name of international diplomacy and all other aspects of government have
not stopped enjoying the federal government’s patronage.
Sometime in 2017 over N6.1 billion was spent buying brand new
cars for our over pampered legislators within this so-called trying period.
Similarly, in September 2019 the Senate justified the N5.5
billion voted for the procurement of Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV) for its
members.
In February 2020, the House of Representatives resolved to
purchase 400 Toyota Camry 2020 model cars acquired for members as official
cars, otherwise called utility vehicles. These are just little of the many
privileges that our legislators have enjoyed within this period of so-called
lean resources.
In August 2020, Nigerians were outraged after President Buhari’s
government confirmed that it donated N1.14 billion to the Republic of Niger.
There was also umbrage when Nigerians became aware of the
government’s similar gift to Afghanistan, not when it was made, but following a
response by the Secretary General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation
(OIC), Hissein Brahim Taha.
Within the same period the APC-led federal government wants
Nigerians to believe that the nation is broke, the president signed a $1.9
billion rail network to link Niger. That is in spite of Nigeria’s rail network
not covering most of the territory he governs. These acts of charity to other
countries, at the detriment of the Nigerian people that supposedly voted into
office, have continued to stoke public anger and heat up the polity.
Can the federal government remind us, just in case we have
forgotten, to what extent it has gone in the last seven years to meet some of
the demands of ASUU?
All said and done, ASUU and its leadership must understand that
if after seven years, the federal government under Buhari has continued to
ignore the need to develop our education, he cannot begin to do that now.
Like the bull in the China shop, ASUU must seek how best to
resolve this dispute just to see to the end of a president who has spent more
time and resources abroad, leave on May 29; if only to ensure that the damage
to the nation, like the China shop, is mitigated.
Afterall, like Aisha Buhari proved last week, ASUU’s continuous
action only affects the ordinary people and not the president, his vice or
other members of his cabinet and they are not the least bothered.
*Okoh is a public affairs analyst
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