By Cajetan Mmuta, Awka
Following the threat by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to embark on a fresh nationwide strike to press home their demand for the Federal Government to pay their remaining months of arrears of salaries and other demands to the universities, parents, lawyers, and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have berated lecturers, saying it will be insensitive down tools now considering the state of the nation.
They also blamed the Federal Government for the periodical strikes in public institutions which have crippled the system, warning that any further strike will worsen the situation.
Penultimate week, ASUU threatened to stop rendering services after the next two weeks if the President Bola Tinubu administration fails to pay public university lecturers their withheld salaries.
Its National President, Emmanuel Osodeke, stated this while speaking on Channels Television’s breakfast show, ‘Sunrise Daily’, and other conventional media latched on to it.
He said it was unfair for the Federal Government to pay lecturers four months of their 2022 withheld salaries and hold on to the remaining three-and-half months.
Osodeke also argued that public universities in the country have so far covered the work for the period that they were on strike in 2022, and should be duly paid.
Recall that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration refused to pay the lecturers insisting on the ‘No Work, No Pay rule’ even when the lecturers called off the strike after eight months.
But the Tinubu-led government ordered that the lecturers be paid four-month salaries out of the outstanding eight months when he took over from his predecessor.
*Parents, lawyers, CSOs, berate lecturers, say it’s insensitive to down tools now
Speaking on the looming ASUU strike, a businessman, George Ojukwu, appealed to the union to soft pedal and seek alternative ways to resolve their demands with the Federal Government.
He said caution must be applied by the ASUU in this regard, considering the current wave of hardship and biting inflation Nigerians are undergoing as a result of the removal of petrol subsidy by the government of the day.
According to him, “Nigerians cannot afford to pass through another week or months of the nationwide strike because, what we are experiencing now, with economic hardship coupled with the astronomical increase in the prices of everything, it will amount to insensitivity to talk about strike now.
“The last eight months of the ASUU strike did not leave anybody without pain and both students, parents, and even universities are still suffering from it. Why anybody in his wisdom and right mind should be thinking of another strike this time when citizens are suffering and the country is bleeding?
“If you look well across the nation, there is fear about what tomorrow holds for everybody. There is insecurity and hunger while landlords are on the throats of tenants with huge rents. Go to the market and see things for yourself as prices of goods go up daily and many other things.
“How can you be talking about a strike so that our children will be at home and crime will keep going up?”
He urged the Federal Government to take steps to ensure that ASUU does not carry out another sit-at-home like what the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPoB) is doing in the South-East.
Also, a parent and journalist, Damian Eqwuonwu, said, “It’s a wrong time for ASUU to demand anything at this time from the Federal Government.”
He noted that it is not the best of times, taking into consideration the harm previous strokes had on students and the university system.”
Egwuonwu maintained that “If students are out of the universities again this time around, they may engage in different unethical activities because an idle mind is the workshop of the devil.
“Apart from keeping the students redundant, the proposed strike by ASUU will also have a lot of harm on our already battered economy; it will multiply the current wave of hardship across the nation.”
Also, a lawyer, John Okoli-Akirika, said, “The truth is that the ASUU issue will continue to be recurrent until the Federal Government takes a comprehensive and contextual approach to solving the problem.
“As rightly pointed out, ASUU made a demand and the government promised to look into their demands. Instead of the Federal Government taking a holistic approach attending to their demands, it now opted to be paying in piecemeal.
“Naturally, ASUU will go back to the junction and start asking for the full payment. So, the recurrent ASUU threat to strike will continue unless and until the government takes a holistic, proactive, decisive, and contextual action to solve the problem.”
He stated, “They said that a problem half-solved is a problem half-continued. So, if the government has not solved the problem, it will continue to recur.
“In as much as parents, students, and stakeholders, at the end of the day will beat the brunt, the utmost blame lies at the doorsteps of the government.
“So, what the government should do is have acceded to ASUU’s request, the government should ensure that they keep to their promise so that ASUU will not continue to have a recourse to stroke as a means of enforcing an agreement with the government.
“When you agree with somebody to do something you either do it half-hazard or didn’t do it fully, you will go back because you didn’t complete the agreement and start asking that he completes it and that’s what ASUU is doing. So, let the government keep faith with the teens of agreement they entered into with ASUU,” Okoli-Akirika said
On his part, the Board Chairman of the International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law (Inter-Society), Emeka Umeagbalasi, said, “The truth of the matter is that Nigeria is decaying every day.
“There is nothing wrong in an academic union threatening to down tools, especially when the issue they are complaining about is a legitimate issue.
“It is legitimate in the sense that since the government had agreed to clear those arrears accumulated during the industrial action to the extent of paying about four months and owing them four months.
“So, if that’s the reason ASUU is threatening a strike, it is a legitimate demand, after all, the same government, whether past or immediate, they say government is a continuum. So, nature abhors any vacuum.
“You put the government in place to ensure there is no emptiness, no vacuum or vacancy. And so, the government is a continuum, and to this extent, the government had already paid four months of the arrears owed. What is the same government waiting for?”
The Inter-Society boss noted that the government was worsening the situation, adding, “If it had agreed to pay the eight months arrears and had paid four months, it should go and look for money and pay the remaining four months so that there will be peace in the land.”
