The story is told about the Tortoise’s in-law stealing from him in the night. He was caught by the Tortoise who tied him to a stake in front of his house for all to know the kind of person the in-law was. Passers-by on the way to their farms and the market in the morning saw the in-law and on being told of his misdemeanour, sided with the Tortoise and heaped insults and spleen on the in-law, saying he very well deserved the humiliation and the punishment meted to him by Tortoise.
However, Tortoise left the in-law tied to the stake till the evening. When farmers and traders were returning home and saw that the in-law was still tied to the stake, they could not hide their disdain for Tortoise and excoriated his action because of their belief that the chastisement had exceeded the transgression. They wondered what he would have done if it had not been his in-law who stole from him. So, Tortoise mismanaged his opportunity, he allowed his anger to exceed acceptable limits and he paid dearly for it.
The moral of the story is that when a thing, even a good one, lingers for too long, it eventually litters if not properly managed. When a point is over-stressed, it becomes stressed out of point.
Members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) are toeing the path of the Tortoise. They had the support of the majority of Nigerians at the outset of their ongoing strike which started on February 14, 2022. Nigerians across all divides supported them because it was believed that the strike was just and justifiable. They believed that if the government committed to an agreement with the union, it should do what it promised to do. They believed that apart from the university teachers agitating for the payment of their earned allowances, they were also employing the tool of industrial action to force the government to shore up its funding of the universities with a view to improving learning environment of their students.
But over 190 days later, the backing of the people for the lecturers is beginning to baulk. Most people, especially parents whose children are dying of boredom from having been at home for longer than necessary, are now of the opinion that the strike has gone on for too long and should be called off. So concerned are the parents that they are willing to pay annual levy to support university education. However, the parents have expressed the belief that since the government has demonstrated the willingness to address part of the issues raised by ASUU the union should be willing to make some concessions so as to facilitate an end to the impasse. They also believe that since the current rot in the university system is a result of years of accumulation, it would take time for it to be totally resolved.
I agree that ASUU should call off the strike now, not because it is bad to continue with it but because it is better to discontinue it. Let me state that I am one with Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, ASUU President, that the lecturers have earned their allowances by working for them and are not begging for crumbs from government. But having said that, it is important to point out that the students are the lecturers’ raison d’être; the lecturers are employed not just to impart knowledge but to mould the lives of their students. There is no doubt that they are concerned about the wellbeing of the students as well as helping to guarantee their proper education. Were it not so, they would have only shown concern about their own allowances and not about improving the learning environment to ensure that anyone who undergoes university education in the country can compete favourably with university graduates from any part of the world.
However, it is public knowledge that the current strike is already having a negative impact on the students. Some of them are already getting involved in untoward activities. If the purpose of the strike action for ASUU is to engender better university products, how would it reconcile that with the fact that its action is turning many a Nigerian undergraduate into youths straight from hell?
To underscore the point that the strike has lingered for too long and it is now being seen as a litter, many parents are beginning to denounce the lecturers’ action. Similarly, in a statement last Thursday, the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) described as “wicked, selfish, and insensitive,” ASUU’s demand for payment of the six months’ salary arrears for the period its members have been on strike. The association said that ASUU’s desire to get the payments for its members portrayed the union as pursuing a narrow interest of members under the guise of fighting to revamp the education sector. If we recall that NANS had earlier supported the action of the lecturers, especially when it asked students all over the country to join the solidarity protest by the Nigeria Labour Congress, it becomes clear that it is in the interest of the striking lecturers to have a rethink and go back to work. Not because of the ‘no work, no pay’ stance of the government, but because of the students, whose interest forms part of the lecturers’ agitation. It is also important for ASUU members to end the strike now and prevent the disdain that was the lot of the Tortoise because he failed to know when to back off from the pursuit of a deserved vengeance.
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