On this day a year ago, ASUU conducted a referendum and the branches unanimously agreed on the declaration of a strike action in 2024. Tha strike threat led to the FG setting up of the Yayale Ahmed's Renegotiation Committee. They concluded the work in December 2024. The minister is keeping the report. Exactly one year later, the minister said FG has satisfied all ASUU demands. But he didn't tell us the demands that were met.
Dear Dr., This is not a hospital
where the Doctor-Patient Confidentiality principle would not allow a Doctor to
speak about a patient. We are not your patients and Doctors, especially
nephrologists who are in charge of a vital organ like the kidney, are not known
to be economical with the truth. Doctors are also not known for misinformation.
You have refused to tell the
public the details of your "robust teaching allowance" and enhanced
salary for academics. Is it the offer of a 25% increase in the current salary
of lecturers before tax deductions? Is that a combination of the enhanced
salary and robust teaching allowance? The good news is that the Minister of
State for Education is a professor on secondment.
One amazing fact about BUK
professors is that they always go back to BUK after such assignments. The
immediate past Substantive NUC ES, Professor Abubakar Adamu Rasheed returned to
BUK in 2023. Your minister of state will go back to BUK in 2027. She has been a
professor for a little over a year. Ask her about the current salary of a
professor in her cadre and add 25% to it. That will tell you the worth you
attached to her as a professor in a Nigerian university.
Having repeatedly said ASUU will
never go on strike again, I understand the anger from the bruised ego as
showcased with your response to the strike declaration. You never expect
lecturers to dare a strike knowing fully well that the government has the power
of suppression by hunger. You expected the lecturers to be scared of hunger,
having experienced it for 8 months during the Muhammadu Buhari-led APC
administration. But they proved you wrong, and you declared a no-work, no-pay
even before the commencement of the strike. Well done, the Yankee minister. You
are doing well.
Welcome to our world. A world not
defined by intimidation. The World of the Nigerian academic. The world of our
reality. That they survived the 8 months of starvation from Buhari's led APC
government is a reason why you should not threaten them with hunger. How do you
threaten a hungry man with hunger? For the 26 years you spent in the US
enjoying a sincere and purposefully built system for Americans and the rest of
the world, we have been here engaging successive governments for the survival
of the Nigerian public universities. The struggle gave our universities a
semblance of a university. The structure of Unilag would have remained the way
it was in 1993 when you left the university as a graduate or degraded, if not
for the proceeds of the ASUU strike.
The lecturers have two options.
It is either to rush for your crumble of bread called a 25% increase, continue
with the current miserable life they are living, with loss of self-worth or
fight even with no pay to restore their moral and economic dignity.
We pride ourselves as the giant
of Africa, but treat our intellectuals like a piece of rag, with the least paid
professors on the continent, yet give intellectual aid to some African
countries. One of such aids is the Technical Aid Corps (TAC) at the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs. Professors from Nigerian universities are paid 2,000 USD (₦3 million) per month to go
help teach Ugandans, Kenyans, etc., in their universities. The same Nigerian
government is paying the same professors an equivalent of 350 USD per month to
teach in Nigerian universities. We attach more value to serving other countries
with our resources than to serving our country. You see why I want to join my
colleagues lobbying for TAC for poverty alleviation.
I expected our Nephrologist
education minister to have done better. Nephrologists manage chronic and acute
kidney problems. They provide comprehensive care that considers the whole
patient because kidney health impacts other organs. The education sector is
sick, and its state of health impacts other sectors. But he is applying Wike's
2013 and Ngige's 2022 approach. The difference is that Goodluck Jonathan was
blessed with the wisdom to call for a meeting with the Union and got a deal
overnight. The wisdom that is far away from others.
To our friends, lecturer haters,
who were mute over the last 2 years, during which ASUU was patiently engaging
the government, and suddenly find their condemnation voice again, your rant
will only make sense to us if it can transform Nigeria's education system.
The warning strike is in its
third day, and the Union is willing to talk when the government is willing. You
said you are here with a Renewed Hope and not hopelessness as it seems now.
Please, let's see the Hope!
By
Prof. Abdelghaffar Amoka Abdelmalik, PhD.
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
aaabdelmalik@abu.edu.ng.
Copyright © Amoka 2025
