ASUU HIJACKED?

Lecturers are on strikein the South-East not because they are owed  salaries but because they want to compel the poor governments of Enugu, Imo, Abia, Anambra and Ebonyi states to pay them what the rich and mighty Federal government t is paying federal lecturers!

Although several meetings have been held between the governors and the lecturers, this has not yielded  fruits.

Indeed, at one of the meetings, the governors insisted on discussing with  only  lecturers from the South- East states since it was a South -East affair but ASUU which had come there with members  from other zones walked out and accused the governors of tribalising the issue. Were the governors right on their decision?

Yes , I dare say! Since the strike began, it is as if the issue is only a South- East action. Media attention  has been on the South East  inspite of the fact that mega rich states like Lagos and Rivers are also experiencing same.

In these two states, ASUU and the governments have been quietly negotiating without outside interference.

At least there has not been a time the western or south south ASUU invited their counterparts from the north or east or both to come and join in the dialogue. But in our case, our ASUU would want to invite even lecturers from Chad to come and be part of the negotiations, forgetting that such negotiations should be done as brothers.

To show they had an ulterior motive, ASUU walked out of the meeting. This incident which  took place in Enugu sadly reminded us once more of the penchant of our politicians to go outside the zone to seek power. Several times many of them had gone to either Aso Rock to be endorsed or to Minna. What they have always failed to ask themselves is why no northerner or westerner has ever been to the south east to meet our elders for endorsement.

In fact this even transcends politics. Before now whenever an emir dies, the South East would send a powerful delegation of Igwes and governors to the burial but when such a thing happens here, one does not see a single emir or governor. Of course ,this  was stopped by Peter Obi of Anambra State when he became chairman of South East Governors’ Forum.

This  is  the same point he wants to prove at the current ASUU negotiations. Thus, the insistence that the negotiations must be between them and their brother lecturers does not make sense. This has not gone down well with Awuzie,the national ASUU president, who thereafter embarked on a campaign of calumny against Obi.

At a recent press briefing in Awka,  Awuzie, took up a personal battle against Obi instead of addressing issues. He acted as though only Anambra’s university was on strike in the entire country.

While the local chapter chairman of ASUU at Anambra State University (ANSU), Nwanegbo, was appreciative of Obi’s gesture of increasing the lecturers’ salary by 50percent and raising their subvention from N50m to N81m, Awuzie did not want to hear that but boasted that they were ready to be on strike for years until their demands were fully met. Yet, this is a man where he teaches, Imo, is still on strike.

It is on record that Awuzie came to Anambra for the briefing and stayed for two days without reaching out to the state government to explore more negotiation options.  Awuzie called Obi all manner of names and accused him of things outside the purview of the strike, prompting journalists there to ask him whether he had any personal axe to grind with  Obi.

At a press briefing  Awuzie  claimed that no infrastructural development had taken place in the ANSU. He conveniently forgot the huge difference Obi had brought to bear on the school which previous governments treated with disdain. He forgot the efforts of Obi in getting the school’s various academic programmes accredited.

How would he not forget when he was so obviously working hard to stay off work instead of been in the classroom. Information at my disposal has it that Awuzie has been hired to also work against the second term ambition of Enugu and Abia States governors by politicians desperate to rule at all costs.

He is bitter that Obi had already got a second term ticket  Seems Awuzie is forgetting that Obi remains the rock of Anambra and had gone through such sponsored attacks several times previously and triumphed.

Besides this though, Obi has remained education friendly and has been demonstrating it at every opportunity.

His government has equipped schools with computers for the first time in the state’s history and has embarked on a construction of a block of five classrooms in all the 177 communities of the state. He has donated buses, generators and science equipment to schools.

Mr. Obiora ODENIGBO, policy analyst, writes  from Anambra State.