UNIVERSITIES’ RESUMPTION: TO THE AIRPORTS, O ASUU!
First there was the strike! The strike was with ASUU! And the strike was compounded by COVID19. And it came to pass that all four of my university-going children are now home. But, to God be the glory, two of the boys have enrolled in a phonerepair apprenticeship, while the girl – a potential medical doctor – is learning to be a seamstress. This is the life, and we have to take, and suffer, it as it comes. May Allah make it easy for us all.
A week or so ago, Minister of Aviation announced government was reopening the airports for international travel August 29 (a date which has just been shifted to September 5). Immediately that announcement was made, the irrepressible Sahara Reporters came out with a rejoinder: “They are opening airports for international flights BECAUSE IT IS TIME FOR THEIR CHILDREN TO RETURN TO THEIR UNIVERSITIES ABROAD!” (Emphasis mine).
Meanwhile, the government is still dillydallying on reopening the universities for our children of BUK, ABU, UNN, UNILAG. A senior minister says this, a junior minister says that,ASUU debunks both of them, and then SSANU and NASU would promise to immediately proceed on strike “as soon as the universities reopen.” Only in Nigeria!
All this toing and froing about the education, and future, of our children is because, as Sahara Reporters rightly pointed out, THEIR children are NOT studying with OUR children at our institutions known as Federal and State Universities. Not to talk of Polys and COEs – left for the hoi polloi, the poor masses whose children cannot even come to the universities one way of the other. Sad, but true.
The other day, Prof Jibrin Ibrahim, my senior academic colleague and Friday Columnist on this newspaper, unearthed a piece I wrote here three years ago (Saturday August 19, 2017) wherein I suggested an out-of-the-box solution to the problem of Nigerian universities – that children of the elite be denied the opportunity to travel abroad to study while our own children languish at home. Prof Ibrahim reshared that article titled DEAR ASUU and, in effect, ‘viralled’ it.
But the senior colleague ‘accused’ me that I wrote the column ‘when I was part of the struggle’. To assuage the sage, I am exculpating myself from his gentle reprimand – and to reiterate part of that 2017 submission. Sir, my stints at the BBC in London, at Deutsche Welle, as Press Secretary to a former Vice President, as Special Adviser/Director General in my state, and even as consultant for the
World Bank (and other anti-struggle multilaterals) have not and will not make me abandon this struggle, in sha Allah. I remain loyal!
Therefore, back to the reinterpretation of the Sahara Reporters’ take on international flights’ resumption – that it is a dubious ploy ‘to facilitate the return of their children abroad’. My thesis is simple – we must all (ASUU, ASUP, COEASU, NUT, NLC, parents, students) UNITE and picket all the international airports and deny boarding to all sons and daughters of all public functionaries proceeding abroad to return to school UNTIL our own children have the same opportunity for quality education in our universities at home.
This is no sour grapes (as a miniscule number of readers accused me back in 2017), it is justice. Also, one mayask, should we visit the sins of the father on the child? I answer the Nigerian way: what then is the sin of my own child who is now home? Is one child better than another just because one father is more “surplused” than the other? If one child is home, shouldn’t the other also be home?
Now, dear ASUU, an effective strike is that which will block privileged children from returning to their cosy schools abroad, so they could also languish at home as mine are doing; until their father, the Excellent Distinguished Honourable, puts heads together with other Distinguishable Excellencies, Honourables and Worships and other members of that fraternity, to ensure the right thing is done, as argued by ASUU, and my children are back in school. Then those children can fly to Ukraine or Bahrain, come rain come snow.
The fact of this matter is that most of our Distinguished Honourables use PUBLIC SECTOR funds (acquired one way another, hook, crook or otherwise) to be able to send their children abroad. There is no proof of inheritance, investment or gift whatsoever. These monies originally come from government coffers, money that ASUU and I and my children also have a right to but, because of an unjust and inequitable “surplus allocation”, the Honourables take the lion’s and the elephant’s shares, and we are left with crumbs.
And, for definition of terms, who are these scions of public service functionaries I termed Excellent Distinguished Honourables? Easy! They are the children of anyone paid from public coffers, be they in the Villa or Government House; in the National or State Assemblies; in the Supreme, Appeal, High or Low Courts;in the Federal or State Secretariat (and especially those of the Federal and State Ministries of Education and their agencies).
And, for added injury on insult, if these privileged children are not studying abroad, they are today in our local ‘Ivy Leagues’ run by Americans and Turks. (And to say Turkey is not even an English-speaking country!). Children whose parents have ‘eaten’ ASUU’s ‘money’ ARE not in BUK or ABU; they are ensconced abroad where there is no strike. They scoff at ours on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram with their fake ‘ajebutter’ accents, while their parents are continuously hunting and gathering Naira to change it into foreign exchange to pay school fees.
So at the airport, ASUU and co. should check passports: if we see a Dantata or an Otedola, a Dangote or an Adenuga, let them pass by all means. Safe flight! But if we see the child of an Excellent ABC or a Distinguished PQR or an Honourable XYZ, they stay!
But to be fair, some senior ASUU members may also have children abroad. They claim they are able to do this because of visiting lectureships, consultancies and other ends and means. Now you can’t run with the hare as well as the hound. If these extra monies come from sources public, their own children also stay. For illustration, I remember the story of a headmaster who, every morning, would take his children to A PRIVATE SCHOOL on his motorcycle, and then return to his ‘headmastering’ in A PUBLIC SCHOOL.
Finally, can’t ASUU, so adept as we are at researching and writing, investigate and list ALL children of public officers studying abroad? Way to go in naming, shaming and undistinguishing! Sweet grapes!