KARO OGBINAKA wrote:
I have to drop this here; being a reply to my friend’s Dr Yemi Oke piece on ASUU and what direction he thinks ASUU should follow.
Conversation with Dr Yemi Oke
Dr Yemi Oke has erroneously averred that ASUU has neglected its members’ welfare because of its Marxist-Leninist’s ideology. He claims that ASUU members are tired of this ideology. Even though he did not justify this claim, I believe no such platitudes should be allowed to pass unchallenged and not corrected. A thorough understanding of the Marxist-Leninist philosophy would speak the opposite of what the writer has attributed to ASUU’s relationship with the ideology. To say the least, the position of the author on the Marxist-Leninist ideology is a pedestal, commonplace and infantile. He may have established his point without referring to the Marxist-Leninist ideology as the plank on which ASUU’s struggles rest; the consequence of which academics are being underpaid as he claimed.
The truth is that Marxism-Leninism promotes workers’ empowerment, and indeed encourages workers to fight their oppressors, embark on revolution and revolt in order to make their lots better. “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have the world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!” was how this was expressed by Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels in their Communist Manifesto. Now, how would one then aver that the ideology that encourages workers to fight for better condition of service is at once now responsible for ASUU’s leadership not doing so? This is contradictory and illogical!
The leadership of ASUU are simply being patriotic and altruistic when they argue for the survival of the public University system over and above their members’ personal gains. If they are by any modicum of measure Marxist-Leninist in orientation, even the Federal Government will not only tremble but may proscribe the Union. ASUU’s struggle will become nothing but an antagonistic class conflict and war!
Let us read Dr Yemi Oke carefully:
“It is up to the Federal Government of Nigeria to fund its Universities, close it down if it can’t fund it or sell it off or privatize it. One thing is sure: we’ll all live to applaud or regret the option. For now, WE UNIVERSITY LECTURERS desire to earn a decent wage like those recently graduated folks trained in the Universities…”
This is sad. This is dangerous. It is the main divide among the rank and file of ASUU and its members. I say sadly because here we have academics seeing public institutions as belonging to the government and not to Nigerian citizens. Why should academics alienate themselves from what is truly theirs? It is dangerous because Dr Yemi Oke says ASUU should sit back, enjoys heavy emoluments and be careless whether the Universities survive or die! He forgets that there is another option. RESIGN AND SEEK EMPLOYMENT IN A PRIVATE UNIVERSITY! Why would one want public institutions sold or privatised? Can you see the CAPITALISM in this thinking and why Dr Yemi Oke has illegitimately and illogically juxtaposed Marxism-Leninism with his neoliberal ideology?
No doubt, it is shameful that Academics in Nigeria are the most poorly paid in the entire civil service structure of Nigeria. ASUU’s leadership cannot exonerate herself from this. Nevertheless, in the six-chapter 2009 AGREEMENT with the FGN, the first issue was CONDITION OF SERVICE that deals with Academic welfare and emoluments. Chapter one being PREAMBLE and chapter two MODUS OPERANDI AND BENCHMARK. Chapters four, five and six dealt with FUNDING; UNIVERSITY AUTONOMY AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM; and OTHER MATTERS respectively.
Dr Yemi Oke and ASUU members ought to draw the attention of its leadership to these issues, But that is exactly why ASUU is on strike. To RENEGOTIATE an AGREEMENT that is since overdue for re-engineering. What is the response of the FGN? The FGN simply brought in the issue of IPPIS in order to conflate and deflect the renegotiation of the AGREEMENT. It is not just the shame of ASUU t
hat academics are maltreated and underpaid because they are fighting for the survival of education in Nigeria. It is clearly a national shame. A Nigerian shame! And the shame of Africa!
One has been in the vanguard of ASUU’s struggles. But to argue along the lines of Dr Yemi Oke is to miss the point. An academic who thinks egoistically of their emoluments and welfare to the detriment of the global University system is like a worm in the intestines of its host that thinks that it will survive so long as it feeds off the host’s blood. The death knell of the host is also the date of the worm’s funeral.
The poor welfare package given to Nigerian Academics is not borne out of any Marxist-Leninist ideology ASUU is promoting. To find an alibi in this ideology, as Dr Yemi Oke has done, is to conduct a funeral service for the wrong corpse! To say that Academics should be careless about the survival or death of public Universities, as Dr Yemi Oke is advocating, and saying further that “ASUU might have left ‘leprosy’ to cure ‘ringworm’” by holding on to her principled position is gory, unpatriotic and self-alienating from institutions – the public Universities – that truly belong to every Nigerian, and NOT to an abstract “GOVERNMENT.” This is the thinking that killed NEPA, the RAILWAYS, THE HEALTH SECTOR, etc. It should not come from those who man the temple of knowledge; who are watchmen over the nation’s lighthouse. But we are entitled to our individual moral options.
Finally, ASUU must continue to fight for the survival and upgrading of public Universities and the University system. But the system embraces both the human and nonhuman. So both must survive!
