The Zonal Coordinator of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Lagos Zone Comrade Adelaja Odukoya, has told President Muhammadu Buhari’s that enough will not be enough until he do the needful and act presidentially by signing the renegotiated agreement, paying of outstanding allowances and ensuring proper funding of public universities among other things.
He added that the various issues confronting the nation, including that of the ongoing strike in the nation’s public universities will not be solved by presidential lamentations but by executive actions induced by rare patriotism and nationalism.
Comrade Odukoya in a statement on Tuesday described Buhari’s ‘enough is enough’ outburst as painful, heartfelt amusement and comical statement as laughable, saying the almost five-month old strike action of our Union was forced on them by the crass insensitivity, non-chalant disposition, ineptitude and crass indifference to the fate of public university education in the country under your leadership.
He noted that: “The fact that the president unfortunately and sadly taken and embraced an attitude of mute indifference and unedifying quietude in the face of calamitous consequences a neglected education sector could foist on generations of Nigerians, including those yet unborn is a clear signpost of leadership failure. Nigerian public university students remain at home while our dear president and his cronies lavish valuable time on partisan party political activities, family egoistic ceremonies and global junketing, and to have finally woken up to address the issue of the national strike in the nation public universities in a season of Eid Adha celebration – season that calls for utmost and supreme sacrifices exemplified by Prophet Ibrahim should elicits both spiritual and popular condemnation.
“The choice of this solemn occasion to trade blames rather than making sacrifice as the season demands appears more of gross lack of understanding of the enormity of the crisis. The usual window-dressing and buck-passing and inability to rise up to serious occasion affecting our country particularly the nation’s education sector is rather unfortunate. This is underscored by the sleep-walk disposition of the un-presidential response to an issue which has been prolonged and exacerbated due to presidential inaction.”
Part of Odukoya statement also reads: Mr. President sir, for ASUU this strike action should not have lasted beyond the first week after it was declared because the issues at stake were neither new nor do they require rocket science to resolve given that there had been MOUs and MOAs as well as a duly renegotiated ASUU-FGN Agreement completed way back 13th May, 2020 before your government which you and your administration neglected and refused to implement and signed. Our Commander –in – Chief, if only your administration has taken the sacred responsibility for education and the future of the Nigerian youth seriously, this latter day unconvincing lamentation without doing anything would have been unnecessary. Your Excellency, your position is to be on top of issues and solve national problems no matter how tough the situation instead of hopeless lamentation and sermonizing.
Therefore Mr. president, saying that enough is enough is mere wishful thinking and will not resolve the present decadence in our universities nor stop the present struggle to reposition our public universities. For the records Mr. President, enough will not be enough in the struggle to reposition the public university education in Nigeria under this present administration and beyond as long as: the Nigerian public universities are reduced to a glorified secondary schools for the production of poor quality and globally uncompetitive, rejected and unemployable graduates; Nigerian academics remain one of the poorest paid scholars not only in Africa but the world; our universities are unattractive to students and scholars from across the globe; universities in the countries are made constituency projects and mushroomed for political exigencies; Nigerian universities, no thanks to IPPIS are run as government parastatals; Nigerian university are seen as profit- centers where government and its functionaries can obtain money to fund its excessive gastrominal greed.
Mr. President, the reason why enough cannot be enough is that you have failed to act presidentially to reposition the decaying and dying public university education in our beloved country. This struggle too shall continue despite the state tyrannical disposition which has since manifested in the use of starvation as an instrument of oppression and subjugation against our members by the refusal to pay our salaries in the last five months. Sadly Mr. President, enough will not be enough until you do the needful and act presidentially by signing the renegotiated agreement.
