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

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!!

Wonderful write-up

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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.