This is more of a review, so be not dismayed to see footnotes, bracketed explanations and all-what-nots.

Following the several ‘negotiation’ (please, don’t tell me a properly elected government has been renegotiating what agreement she willingly arrived at and signed an MoU, for commitment sake. Just don’t tell this guy) meetings between the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU and the Federal Government of Nigeria with regard to the lingering strike rocking the country’s public universities, the Federal Government has, according to the news making the rounds, “decided to break off negotiation with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) over what it called the infiltration of the union by the opposition to discredit the government.”

What! That’s alarming. That a government (maybe the people currently occupying that position do not in anyway understand the gravity of their office, utterances and actions) would subscribe to cheap blackmail, libel and outright propaganda against the citizens she’s meant to serve. That’s alarming.

If the same government admits there are about 1.8 million of her citizens in these public universities, then one can only imagine that serving this ‘small’ number well, especially with their education is ultimately a great service to the country. This is because the educated members of any community are the ones who will lift that community out of the gutters. However, that’s if they are properly trained (by that, I mean more practically trained to be result-oriented and not the theory-personified graduates that methinks the government is satisfied creating. Theory-personified graduates who, in the final analysis, do not know where is the right and where, the left).

At least, such graduates will not know what their worth in their own country.

They will not know that the natural resources of the country belong to everyone; hence, the revenues generated from same.

They will care less about how these revenues are expended.

When they read or hear words as this screaming at them “Let’s maintain PEACE in IFE and ENVIRONS” on billboards in front of big big big big houses of hitherto poor people until they too got to Abuja with the mandate of the people, they won’t even know the real meaning. (When man chop full finish, na to tell ever other person not to shout so as not to disturb dem own peace. Whether the people wey get the mandate get peace for dem heart or not is no “filled man’s business”.)

Now, to the libel, blackmail and propaganda.

Once, the story from the government quarters was that ASUU was demanding N92 billion. (ASUU came out to say it was actually N87 billion. That’s a difference of N5 billion. Obviously, someone in government has need for that extra N5 billion.)

Then, again it was that everything ASUU was asking was salary increase. I’m afraid since the commencement of this strike, salary increase has never been an issue but if the government wants it to be an issue, it must be because, some people in government has need for that extra increase. Of course, they sure know how to pocket such ‘things’ even before the supposed beneficiaries can blink an eye.

The most current one by our GOVERNMENT WITH HIGH REPUTATION to say the least is that the opposition has infiltrated the ranks of ASUU; and this, the ‘Government of the People’ claim is the reason why ASUU has “remained ‘rigid and unbending’ to suggestions on how to agree on some of the issues it was agitating for so as to end the strike which had entered its ninth week.” One can only wonder since when the government has become like the theory-oriented graduates who do not know the difference between negotiation and an already signed MoU.

How thinking or unthinking can it be for ASUU (a body with probably the most Professors in Nigeria) to allow the infiltration of their ranks with opposition, and especially for the government to claim such a horrendous ‘stuff’? Does the government know what opposition means? Does the government know opposition might have infiltrated their ranks too? WHo will forget the last time the Presidency claimed Boko Haram has infiltrated the government? So, what does it matter now that they claim ‘human’ opposition has infiltrated ASUU? Does the government expect the opposition to be a ‘no-face’ entity, residing in the crevices of life that doesn’t really exist? lol.

And then, this one. The government in a bid to sideline ASUU and buoy the spirit of the students into supporting them against ASUU (an obvious miscalculation, I suppose) has promised to offer monetary incentives somewhat to students. Of course, who doesn’t know that the reigning culture is ‘ghana-must-go’? That’s what happens everywhere, especially in government corners and they are only under some sort of pressure to extend the same to the people they are supposed to educate. That’s if the students are not better than the government in that wise. Anyway, the one knows it is probably the only language understood by the other. So, use it!

Hear this as I quote…

“As a way of making nonsense of the industrial action by ASUU, SaharaReporters gathered that the government plans to introduce loans to the students throughout their period in the university so as to cushion the effect of the financial hardship on the students.

“The government expects the students to re-pay the loans after graduation provided they get jobs of their choice. It however could not be ascertained how the loan to the students would compel the lecturers to call off the strike.”

(One should be afraid of this even more than the need for lecturers calling off the strike. All such similar monies that have been released in the past, what happened to them? Lost in transit. That’s what we say but the people whose pockets the moneys ended wouldn’t say ‘lost in transit’, will they? Let’s continue…)

With the foregoing, the government expects the students to be jubilating because out of the TRILLIONS some members of the government have successfully stashed somewhere, they will give out TRINKETS to students, who hitherto could not afford it. Let me strike a note of warning, Nigeria is one of the very few countries, if not surprisingly the only one, that is always desperate to implement glimpsed foreign policies without having put in place necessary measures to ensure such policies are properly ‘annexed’ (nay, stolen). So, the much of the country that you and I know should suffice to tell us that this country, sorry, I mean the people we elect to lead us, at least for now, will not (at least, not in their sane or insane minds) go all out to do what they and us all know is good for the country.

Where will that act leave them? I mean, sharing as loan (is it N1,000, N5,000 or N100,000) to 1.8 million Nigerian students). Where will they get that from? I thought they said the country has no money. Hahahaha. Of course this must be one of the lie lie they peddle. But don’t say lAkUnLeScReWs said it’s a lie because they may just rush to bring back all the monies stashed in Switzerland and elsewhere and pay up. They’ll call it ‘saving face’.

One last word, also quoted from Saharareporters:

“The National President of ASUU, Dr. Nasir Fagee, had last week during a press conference at the University of Lagos, Nigeria said the union had pulled out of the negotiation between the union and the Nigerian government citing insincerity as reason for its decision, adding that the union would not call off its strike until the agreement the government signed with the union in 2009 is honoured.”

A personal opinion here “It is alarming and can only happen in a country that is sane and insane for a government, like a mother, to hear her child crying and all she can do is scream at her, pleads that she stops and even spanks her, if need be, so she can stop crying without ultimately filling her need. Is this a country?”

Related articles

• ASUU stirke: Groups, students protest in Benin (olawandesalam.wordpress.com)
• ASUU STRIKE: Groups, Students Protest In Benin (funnyollys.wordpress.com)
• ASUU Strike – Students’ Peaceful Protest Turns Bloody In Delta (muzicupdate.wordpress.com)
• “Strike: Again, FG, ASUU Refuse To Shift Ground” – Nigerian Press (lakunlescrews.wordpress.com)
• FG Breaks-Off ASUU Negotiation, To Introduce Student Loans (9jatopjambs.wordpress.com)
• FG Breaks-Off ASUU Negotiation, To Introduce Student Loans (upcomerstubenation.wordpress.com)
• Why Strike Must Continue,by Asuu (funnyollys.wordpress.com)
• Nigerian Government Break Off Negotiations With Striking University Professors, Blames Opposition (funnyollys.wordpress.com)
• ASUU Strike UPDATE: ASUU Withdraws From Negotiations with FG (jewesons.wordpress.com)
• ASUU Adamant, Disregards FG’s ‘No Work, No Pay’ Threat (uniosunamebor.wordpress.com)