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ASUU And Federal Goverment Are Fool By Funke Egbemode by Doctor20002(f): 1:15pm On Dec 01, 2013 |
I have restrained myself from commenting one way or the other on this ASUU strike that has finally come to a head. At first I told myself it would not last longer than a month. Then I got angry with those who signed the 2009 agreement apparently without reading the document. That also got me wondering if the lecturers who we all respect because they are supposed to have more sense than the rest of us actually believed that this nation can afford to fund that 2009 shopping list. To me the agreement was the kind of promise a man would make in the throes of ecstasy. As soon as he’s come and done, the woman is on her own, or at best she would have to renegotiate. Every woman knows that a promise extracted from a man with a desperate nozzle is a promise you can’t take to the bank. So, did ASUU not know that the Federal Government does not have the wherewithal to keep the promises in the 2009 agreement or the body thought it could make a hot nozzle deliver on any promise after discharging its fuel? Once a nozzle is cold, it forgets all promises. So, lesson number one, never believe promises made when a man’s eyes are glazed. In place of the hot nozzle promise I offer the jeans-under-the lingerie option. According to a friend, the wife of a powerful king wanted her husband to cede a portion of royal property to her family and used the theory. Here’s what she did. She put on her sexiest negligee and went into the royal chambers. She pushed all the king’s buttons, caressed and massaged the king until the old man was ready to beg. She allowed him to remove the negligee, with trembling hands of course. And right under the flimsy sexy stuff was a pair of jeans held firmly in place with a designer belt. The king was stunned. The queen whisked out the land document and pleaded with the king to sign. Did he sign? Yeah. His nozzle was hot. The queen went on to make him thoroughly, mind- blowingly happy. Both king and queen sighed deliciously and lived happily ever after. However, there is a little problem with the jeans-under-the-lingerie theory. It can only be used where the parties involved are in love with each other. And since what exists between the FG and ASUU is employer-employee relationship, ASUU should not wear any sexy stuff unless it can make the nozzle hot and desperate. Now, seriously, ASUU should call off this strike or do what the FG has commanded. This handshake has gone beyond the elbow. When a President sits with a union for 13 hours to resolve an impasse and the union sticks to its gun, you know the end won’t be in favour of the union. No matter how much an employer loves his employee, there will still be lines of demarcation that must not be crossed. My people say it is the same teeth that the dog uses to play with her puppies that she uses to bite them. No matter how tall the okro plant is, it will be bent when it is harvest time. The boss is the boss no matter the number of university degrees the employee possesses. Even if your boss is a stark illiterate, the day you apply for a job in his establishment is the day you acknowledge that he has something you do not have. So you see, we may not like the ‘with immediate effect’ phrase used by the Federal Government but until you are holding the handle of a sword, you cannot go hunting for the man who killed your father. The boss is the boss even if you hate his guts. He is the piper who dictates the tune. In other words, can the Federal Government sack lecturers who do not resume on December 4? Yes, it can. It is unimaginable. It sounds farfetched but the FG is the boss here. How will the FG replace millions of lecturers it wants to sack? It would be a herculean task but what if the FG decides to cross that bridge when it gets there? Will this kind of show of federal might in its raw form lead to brain drain? Oh yes, definitely. Some of our great professors will leave for Oxford and Yale. Since we didn’t send them to school with federal money, they reserve the right to change jobs and call the bluff of any employer. But how many brains will be drained? Less than 20%, most likely. Which is why I believe some lecturers will resume on Wednesday. Already some Chapters of ASUU have resumed since last week and a few have backed FG’s sack threat. Like the Nigerian Governor’s Forum, ASUU is broken. A broken ASUU is not totally good, or totally bad either. And the lecturers brought this on themselves. They may not agree with me but I think they overplayed their hands. They must have forgotten that they are employees of the state at the end of the day. We value and respect them but they are salary earners and the boss who pays the salaries has some rights too. Yet, the boss must not lose sight of our dilapidated education sector. Things are not what they ought to be. Like ASUU wants, we need better focussed funding. This is one sector that affects all the other sectors of all of our national life. For as long as our institutions of learning are ignored or treated shabbily, for that long will our nation remain on its knees, head bowed, shoulders slumped. ASUU has a huge point but a bad school and a shut school are identical twins. You cannot teach students that are not in school. You cannot behead a man because you want to cure his headache. ASUU started a good strike which we all bought into but parents and students are tired. Only short strikes enjoy sympathy here. Any long drawn out strike leaves the strikers looking like mean men, and women. I will conclude with this well known folk tale. The tortoise married the daughter of the snail. The snail was a rich farmer. We all know the tortoise is not a fan of hard work. So he resorted to stealing from his father-in-law’s farm. One day the tortoise was caught harvesting yams he did not plant and hauled off to his father-in-law’s compound to explain himself. What was there to explain? The snail was very angry and he ordered his servants to tie the tortoise to a tree on the way to the market so that the whole village would know the shameful thing his son-in-law had done. Everybody saw the tortoise sweating on their way to the market and poured insults on him. They called him names and spat on him. They hissed and squeezed his nose. But these same people were shocked to find the tortoise still tied to the stake on their way back in the evening. Their sympathy shifted to tortoise as they castigated the snail. ‘This snail is really wicked.’ ‘He is unforgiving too.’ ‘If he can do this to his son-in-law, only God knows what he would do to an outsider.’ ‘I bet he would kill anybody who offends him.’ ‘Maybe he will still kill tortoise.’ That is where ASUU is now, in the snail’s shoes. In the morning when it tied the Federal Government to the tree, we supported it and wondered why the government was being mean to ASUU. Now, five months on and still tied to a tree, we share FG’s pains. In fact we are so in much pain that we have forgotten the Federal Government’s sins. Too much of a good thing… The Sun 3 Likes |
Re: ASUU And Federal Goverment Are Fool By Funke Egbemode by philfearon(m): 1:47pm On Dec 01, 2013 |
Word,dear, Word!! ASUU just have to admit it,they took a wrong turn this time around!! If the lecturers think that Sacking over 60000 lecturers is a herculean task,they should bear in mind that when they first came for the job interview that led to their employment,so many others came but were not employed!! |
Re: ASUU And Federal Goverment Are Fool By Funke Egbemode by fasho01(m): 2:33pm On Dec 01, 2013 |
Wonderful write-up Front page mods |
Re: ASUU And Federal Goverment Are Fool By Funke Egbemode by bolaji73(m): 2:53pm On Dec 01, 2013 |
nice write up sis.can't still fanthom y some peeps re still supporting dis group of old organise glottons..anyway time will tell when we will knw d servant frm d oga. |
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