ASUU vs Ngige: All hail the winner
everything is quiet on the ALUTA front! All those who were begging ASUU to have mercy on students and their parents have gone dead silent. Those who intervened and persuaded the Asuuists to exercise patience one more time, have gone on to other more important things.
The Congress of Ngige University Academics are clinking glasses, forgetting that the cane with which the first wife was chastised is still behind maigida’s chair. ASUU has had its NEC meeting, bemoaned the casualisation of intellectualism and have followed it up with a demonstration against this daily-paid-lecture model. Ngige, who has personalised a war between the Federal Government and ASUU, now goes about talking tough and pontification. Probably he will soon write a book on ‘Dealing with irritant unions: The Ngige Model’!
I had planned to write on ASUU, Nigerians and a Government Suffering from AIDS! (AIDS? Acute Integrity Deficiency Syndrome). I will still write that. But them I came at this piece written by an insider, who was busy umpiring the bloody bout between Ngige and ASUU. That referee is my beloved, Ada Muo (PHD). She believes that Ngige dominated the ring all through the combat and gave ASUU a TKO. I have leased this column to her for today. Read on and make up your mind!
Dr. Chris Ngige has won again! By his recent mischievous and Supreme Court-enabled winning goal against ASUU, he earns the coveted title of Omaluasuummonwu 1 of Nigeria. This time around, his fame, which smells as pleasantly as cow dung, has swollen beyond Anambra State where he was sworn in as the governor at the infamous Okija Shrine, even before his May 2003 official swearing in ceremony. By the same ingenuity, the former governor has forced ASUU back to the abandoned classrooms.
Imagine! The ASUU president, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, sounded as if lecturers have been robbed, oppressed, ‘nothinised’ and defeated when they have simply been told to go back to classes and wait for a government that is seriously planning to implement the Asuu/federal Government 2009 agreement, since the past seven years. Who does not know that Nigeria has no money and has been borrowing to build all the solid infrastructure we all enjoy today? Or is it because the government ‘dashed’ Afghanistan a paltry $1,000,000.00s just the other day, to maintain its big brother image? Is it because the same Nigerian government transferred common N1.4 billion to Niger to buy designer vehicles? Our award-winning president, and the best president Nigeria has ever had, even had to humbly explain that his cousins live in Niger Republic! Ngige understood all these and that was why he recruited the Industrial and Supreme courts to order lecturers, who claimed that they have not received a dime, to go back and teach students who have not received lectures for eight months.
O! Breaking news! The lecturers just admitted that each of them received only half of his/her October salary. Why is it so difficult for academics to understand that the government is trying to help them keep the other half in safe hands? After all they will soon need the money to buy several bags of rice as Christmas gifts to relatives and friends. And considering the way food prices are falling as if they are under special anointing, before Christmas a 50kg bag of rice could be picked for just N50,000.
By the way, why should lecturers, who are paid millions every month to teach a couple of students in state-ofthe-arts classrooms planted all over Nigeria, ask for revitalisation of education and salary increase? Imagine the ingratitude, disrespect and impudence! So those lecturers really expect a very prudent and sensitive government like Buhari’s to release such earthshaking amount in these hard times? If they ‘dash’ universities and lecturers trillions of naira where will our hardworking and honest public servants, like the accountant general, get a paltry N200 billion for miscellaneous expenses like buying a house in the heart of Abuja for his teenager crush? Which one will monkeys, snakes and ants chew and swallow like village goats that will never stop bleating even when their mouths are filled with fodders? Which money will our very patriotic political leaders ‘carry’ to send their children to the best universities abroad and buy houses in UK, USA, Dubai and Canada? Is ASUU indirectly trying to discourage all those private universities that charge peanuts to make quality education accessible to children of nobodies? I don’t really understand ASUU. I don’t understand them at all at all. Those lecturers sef! That is why too much reading is not good.
Yes! By one vicious blow on the heart of ASUU and university education, Ngige has engraved his name in the history of education in Nigeria. He has written his name in gold. Forgive me! Diamond rather! And it is that type of rare diamond sitting majestically on the crown of the late Queen Elizabeth. Ngige is really extremely wise and intelligent. Anyway, is he not a medical doctor and a former governor, even when he jumped into that seat through the window? The man is in the spirit! The ill-conceived plans of ASUU to dip their fingers into the Federal Government’s pot and grab the money meant for ‘carrying’ and for sharing during the 2023 elections must have been revealed to him. And as a man of wisdom, he decoded the message and acted like a level-headed elder that he is.
Tell me, which “responsible government” (Fashola) would tolerate distractions like “ASUU’S rascality” (Onochie), after beheading the very unnecessary October 2020 ENDSARS jamboree by Nigerian “lazy youth” (Buhari)? Both were handiworks of the opposition who are doing everything to brand Buhari’s APC government as clueless. How then can a minister of Ngige’s status sit and watch a group of rascals derail his principal’s obvious prodigious efforts at fulfilling all his campaign promises, including uninterrupted university education, pulling naira up to the status of dollar, providing 24-hour power supply and water-tight security? Yes! Even the blind can see how the current Nigerian government’s achievements are making Dubai, Singapore and Rwanda look like early 20th Century contraptions. Abeg, the honourable minister of Labour and Employment, and his APC government, should be congratulated for adding another colourful feather to their already over-decorated cap. They have given education the same executive treatment they still accord critical sectors like security, power and economy.
Fortunately, Ngige, who has been serving Nigerians like those black slaves served Americans, will soon have his well-deserved rest as the Buhari-led APC government will end in 2023 and Ngige will be welcomed back into the normal society with igba-eze, as the odogwu that he is. As an ex-minister and common(?) man, he will meet lecturers and students and they will surely give him warm hugs and place large baskets of ‘thank you’ on his palms for all the impressive make-over work he did to cover deep frowns and carve permanent smiles on their faces. As researchers and lecturers in and outside Nigeria, will study his win-win negotiation skills, styles and strategies to make them readily available for political leaders at all levels and in all climes, in the global quest for sustainable development.
Biko, help me raise seven resounding GBOSAAS for Ngige! Also help me insist that the unfinished business of both courts must be completed. They need to also order all the universities in Nigeria, to, each award Dr. Chris Ngige an honorary doctorate degree. And since Nigeria is a country where signs and wonders walk and work in broad daylight like Lagos thugs, Ngige should be given an automatic employment in any university of his choice, on the strength of those degrees so that he too can enjoy the paradise Nigerian government graciously and respectfully places at the feet of those lecturers who are always pretending to be as hungry and overworked as an orphan with a wicked step-mother. Our honourable minister of Labour and Employment, by his record-breaking winning goal which ended the eight months Asuu-federal government impasse, deserves all these and more. Doesn’t he?
*Ada Muo.*
Ngige is really extremely wise and intelligent. Anyway, is he not a med ical doctor and a former governor, even when he jumped into that seat through the window? The man is in the spirit!