President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Prof Emmanuel Osodeke has insisted that deploying the instrument of the state to compel the striking lecturers to go back to school will be counterproductive.
Prof. Osodeke, who disclosed this while speaking with pressmen, expressed worries that Nigeria stands to lose if lecturers are forced back to the classroom, stressing that no lecturer was going to teach with their whole heart.
“How many of those lecturers are going to use their minds and wills to teach courses the way they should teach them? Just ask yourself that question. How many? They will go back to school. Who will lose? This country will lose. And you believe that that is the best way to go,” he stated.
He spoke in reaction to the Federal Government’s decision to compel the union to return to the classroom by dragging it to the National Industry Court through the Federal Ministry of Labour. The Federal Government is seeking court’s injunction to order the striking lecturers to call off the strike.
The Federal Government of Nigeria activated the no work, no pay policy on the striking lecturers since March, 2022, a month after the strike commenced in February. ASUU has equated this as a FGN’s mechanism to weaponize hunger as a strategy to suppress the union and force them back to the classroom.
Prof. Osodeke described the FGN’s strategy as a case of “give them hunger treatment, while they are on hunger treatment, force them back to school.”
ASUU President maintained that the union was ready to call off the strike without delays but that the Federal needed to show leadership and commitment.
“We are requesting that we elected these people, we should put pressure on these politicians to come back to the table and resolve these issues. “Jonathan did. Jonathan decided to resolve it in one night. And when we now met with Jonathan, he saw the truth.
“People feed him with lies, but when we met with him, in those 14 hours, for the first time, he saw the truth, that all that they have been telling him were all lies with documentation. And that strike ended. Now they are also doing the same thing”, Prof. Osodeke said.
“I am appealing that we are willing to call off the strike any day, even tomorrow, but we have to have something concrete that we can come back with. Something concrete that will change where we are today, where students are in a lecture hall and sitting on a bare floor. It is still happening up till today.
“Where people are having lectures in an open space. Where students are taking lectures peeping from windows. Where one thousand students are using two microscopes in a laboratory. Where you are using stove as Bunsen burners. Where you see four professors sitting in one room as an office. That is the crisis and if we don’t resolve it, this country will be in a perpetual problem” the statement read.
ASUU pointed out that it was uncharitable of the Federal Government to be using some uniformed students to fight their teachers. ASUU president recounted that he had been informed that the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) has joined the Ministry of Labour to sue ASUU to court.
“I have been told and I just got the court summon yesterday that the NANS has also joined the Ministry of Labour to sue us. But you know why? It is the illegal NANS. You know they had elections and two factions emerged.
“One is in Lagos campaigning for them to resolve the issue, one is with the Ministry of Labour going to court. Ileegal group! And you know they won’t raise the money, somebody paid them, somebody paid for those things, paid the lawyers, certainly not those students. Instead of resolving the issues, you are going to court. So those are basically the issues.
“And I have continued to talk to the students, we also have our children in the schools. We have our colleagues in school, we are the biggest people who are punished most. I have not been paid my salaries for the past seven months. My colleagues have not been paid for seven months and their children are at home.
“But what we are doing is for the future. If these things succeed and you have good universities, you will sit in the same class with the children of the president. You will share the same double bunk bed with the child of a senator. You will use the same lab with the child of a senator. Until we get there and you will be taught by lecturer from all over the world, so that you are not stereotyped.
“Somebody who is coming from England will give you his perspective from that country about what he is teaching you. A person coming from the Netherlands will give you that perspective. Just like we Nigerian are giving it to other countries.”
Professor Osodeke decried the great damage politicians and bureaucrats have done to the Nigerian University system. According to him, the usual tradition of merit has been sacrificed on the alter of tribalism and political connections.
“Go to South Africa, Nigerians are Heads of Departments. In one of the universities, a Nigerian is the Vice Chancellor, even in England. But in Nigeria where we have gotten to today is that no Yoruba man can be a VC in the North. No Hausa man can be a VC in the West and no Igbo man can be a VC in UNIABUJA. That is where we have reduced ourselves to.
“If you are not from Cross River, you cannot be a Vice Chancellor in University of Calabar. If you are not from River State, you cannot be a VC in University of Port Harcourt. But in the past, the first VC in University of Ibadan, was an Igbo man. The first VC in UNN was an Hausa man. But we have eroded all those ones. Because the politicians are interfering, the bureaucrats are interfering with the system in the university.
“They have refused to allow the universities to run well, to run competitively with other countries of the world. If we continue this way, we will be chasing the shadows as no Nigerian university is ranked among the first 1000 universities in the world. So that is the crisis and that is why we are on strike. So, we are appealing that those in power should intercede and ensure that this issue is resolved as quickly as possible”, he said.