BY TIMOTHY AGBOR, OSOGBO
The President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Emmanuel Osodeke has asked Nigerians to ensure that all political office holders who have a hand in the ongoing strike embarked upon by the union are voted out in the 2023 general elections.
Osodeke urged undergraduates who are affected by the lingering industrial action to see their predicament as a sacrifice for their children and grandchildren.
He said Nigerian political leaders lacked feelings for average Nigerians and the nation’s education sector because their children and family school abroad.
The ASUU president made these known on Thursday after attending a Special Congress of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife chapter of ASUU held at First Bank Lecture Theatre.
Fielding questions from journalists after meeting with OAU lecturers, Osodeke said the Federal Government was yet to respond to all the issues the union tabled before adding that the nation’s university education was collapsing.
He said, “As at now, we can’t identify what has been achieved because the government has not responded to virtually all the issues that we have talked about but the essence of what we have done is that we have mobilised the Nigerian people to know that this present set of leaders have no feelings for the Nigerian people, have no feelings for Nigerian students, have no feelings for Nigeria as a country and that is why they are looking down on the education system, allowing their universities to be shut down for almost six months without response, that will never happen in any country of the world.
“My advice to the students is this, for any country to develop, people must make sacrifices and that’s what they are doing. You just agree with me that Nigerian university has collapsed or is at the verge of collapsing if not for ASUU and their present struggle, the fact that they are at home, they are making sacrifices for future generations. If by this strike, universities are well funded, students live in good hostels, stay in classrooms where they will not have to hang around windows when having lectures or sitting on a bare floor, having equipped laboratories that will be equivalent to any other parts of the world, sit in the same classrooms with children of Ministers, Governors, children from United Kingdom, America, Ghana in the same classrooms and be learning, they would have made sacrifices for their future generations, their children and great grandchildren. So, it’s a struggle they are having, not just for themselves but for future generations.”
On why members of ASUU have been leaving the country in droves since the strike commenced, Osodeke said they were doing so because of the way the Nigerian government has been treating lecturers.
“We don’t have the statistics (of lecturers that have left Nigeria) but I know a large number would have moved out, not mainly because they hate this country but because of the way they are being treated. There is no country in the world where academics go on strike and you say the best way to bring them back is to use hunger weapon, seize their salary. While we are on this strike, lecturers in the UK went on strike, it didn’t take them days to resolve it. The Ghanaians went on strike, they resolved it. But here, they feel nonchalant and you know why, it’s because they have no commitments here.
Their children are not here, they have taken their children abroad, their wives are permanently abroad, you saw the children of president, senators, governors having their convocations outside and you see other governors coming to stay with them in solidarity. So, we have leaders who don’t have any feelings for the children of the poor and ordinary Nigerians.
“ASUU will go as far as they are ready to also take us. We also appeal to Nigerians, this is their lives, and the beauty is that in the next five or six months, there will be an election, they should hold their PVC and for all those who have subjected them to this, they should vote them out. It’s their right.
Anybody who has allowed them to stay at home, while their students are enjoying education all over the world, they should be voted out,” he said.
Osodeke expressed worry that the Federal Government could attend to the plights of the aviation sector when it threatened to go on strike adding that it was easy for the government to have to attend to it because that’s the only means of transportation for politicians and public office holders.
“That’s how they move, that’s how they travel, can you see a Senator going on the road? Because it affects them directly, they quickly resolve it, but education doesn’t affect them because their children are not here, they are not interested. That equally tells you what we are talking about. Many of them are trying to buy private jets to fly around. A man who stole N170 billion is asking for a plea bargain and the government is ceding. It’s a shameful country.
“The government claims they don’t have money but they increased their BTA by 100 percent, the one they used for travel. No strike, nothing, they increased by 100 percent. You are going to Niger to dash money. You are spending N400 billion on tradermoni, N200 billion to feed children in primary schools. Is that what Nigerians want?”
On the ASUU OAU crisis where a faction had emerged, he said, “we have said a number of things here (Congress) and the good thing is that we now have a new Vice Chancellor who loves this (OAU) university. From my interactions with him, he loves this university and also raised the issue of not having division here. So, we do hope that with him around, we will resolve all these issues so that OAU will come back to how it was in the past as one of the leading campuses of the Academic Staff Union of Universities. I know that with the commitment this new Vice Chancellor has shown with the few days he has spent, we will resolve these issues once and for all.”
