A LETTER TO ASUU

By Bala Muhammad | Publish Date: Aug 19 2017 10:00AM

My Dear ASUU.

May Allah strengthen the bargaining skills of ASUU leaders as they sit down with, and stand up to, another version of “Federal Government” in the same system but with a different party.
When ASUU wins (as in sha Allah it will), I stand to personally gain; so do my children who are now home; and so does our education system.
I have often repeated here that there is no profession more honourable than teaching. The ‘honourable’ in politics is fake; the prefix is automatically assumed the moment one is rigged in - or rigs himself - into office. But teaching is divine. Prophets of God were known as teachers. Disciples of Jesus (Prophet Isa alaihis salam) addressed him as ‘Teacher’. And, among teachers, university lecturers are a special breed. One does not usually become a Graduate Assistant (the first rung) unless one was quite sharp up ‘there’ (not that it matters any more in this country).
Now, having said that, let me repeat that my children who are in the university are now home. But I have this friend (actually I should say “I had…” before he became a Distinguished) who has children the same age as mine. These distinguishable children are schooling abroad, but they are now on holiday. And they are preparing to return to school abroad.
Now, an effective strike is that which will block these children from returning to their cosy schools abroad so they could also languish at home as mine are doing; until their father, the Distinguished, puts heads together with other Distinguishables and Their Excellencies and Honourables and Worships and other members of his fraternity to ensure ASUU is appeased, and my children are back in school. Then they can fly to Ukraine or Bahrain come rain come snow.
This is not sour grapes! It is because Distinguished uses PUBLIC SECTOR money to send his children abroad. Monies ASUU and I and my children also have a right to, but because of an unjust “surplus allocation” he takes the lion’s and the elephant’s shares. So it’s not about him; it is about the system.
I didn’t complain, did I, about the other friend whom I know also has children abroad but he is an accomplished consultant minding his business without public funds. Or the friend who is into manufacturing and has an industry in Sharada Industrial Area, Kano. His children can also depart.
I admit I am a member of the elite (not that I can help it). But many members of the elite have a conscience. A point I have been making for the past 30 years - since a 1987 NTA Kano live debate on education that I participated in as a student - is that private schools have killed public schools in this country. The moment public office holders started to enrol their children into private nursery, primary and secondary schools, and private universities here and abroad, that moment the death knell of the masses’ education was sounded.
Back in 1999, just after the general elections, one Northern Governor-Elect breezed into the BBC Hausa Service in London “for an interview”, and I was assigned to interview him. One of the questions I asked him was how he was going to address the sad state of education in his state. He rambled and rambled. I then suggested to him would he consider letting his children attend public school with the children of the poor electorate who had so much hope in him?
You wouldn’t want to hear his answer. He was very lucky it was not a live interview, and I was conscientious not to air the whole interview and eternally embarrass him among the millions of listeners. He had cast aspersions on the public school system and their teachers and “over-his-body”-ied the suggestion. He is still one of the big men of Nigeria, his children are abroad and his state came near last in the last WAEC.
Then there was this Deputy Governor I knew who permanently stationed one of his wives abroad tending to his flock of children who were (and perhaps still are) schooling there. One other wife was permanently stationed in Abuja as Returning Officer. Yet another wife was Second Lady in the original state where the resources were sourced. And citizens of that state knew this. And it was their money, not proceeds of business of inheritance. That state also fared terribly in NECO, but his own children obtained 9As. His good luck? No, our money.
Now this is the attitude of our so-called leaders, spiritual, temporal, and rigged-in. In fact, didn’t one of them promise that as soon as he was sworn in he was going to enrol his children in public schools? Did he? Who is following up? And how many graduations of the children of the high and mighty have you witnessed this last July alone? Were they not all over the social media, laughing at us?
Therefore, while this strike lasts, ASUU and ASUP and COEASU and NUT and NLC and all like-minded organisations should picket the airports in Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kano, Enugu and Kaduna and deny boarding to all sons and daughters of all public functionaries who are proceeding abroad.
And who are these public service functionaries? Easy! Children of anyone paid from public coffers be they in the Villa or Government Houses; be they in the National or State Assemblies; be they in the Supreme, Appeal, High or Low Courts; be they in the Federal or Secretariat (and especially those of the Federal and State Ministries of Education and their agencies).
Around the time of the last ASUU strike about four years ago, when the money ASUU was asking for was just N150 billion, the Central Bank announced that that exact amount ($1 billion in 2013 exchange rate) was what some Nigerian parents were spending on their children studying in Ghana (common Ghana, as it then was) and Egypt, Malaysia, Dubai, the UK, the US and other countries. Children of those who matter are mostly not at Bayero University, Kano, or the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
And if these privileged children are not abroad, they are in our local ‘Ivy Leagues’ run by Americans and Turks. (And to say Turkey is not even an English-speaking country!). Children whose parents have ‘eaten’ ASUU’s ‘money’ ARE not in BUK or ABU; they are ensconced abroad where there is no strike. They scoff at ours on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram with their fake ‘ajebutter’ accents while their parents scoff at us by continuously hunting for Naira and gathering foreign exchange to pay the school fees.
One may ask, should we visit the sins of the father (distinguished) on the child? I answer the Nigerian way: what is the sin of my child who is now home? Is one child better than another just because one father is more “surplused” than the other? If one child is home, shouldn’t the other also be home?
So at the airport, ASUU and co. should check passports: if we see a Dantata or an Otedola, a Dangote or an Adenuga, let them pass by all means. Safe flight! But if we see the child of an Excellent ABC or a Distinguished PQR or an Honourable XYZ, they stay! Until ASUU says OK.
This current strike is so unexpected because this is a government ASUU had so much trust in and respect for. This strike is about bettering the lives of our children (who have remained in our local universities) that are being short-changed by subsequent Nigerian governments in refusing to implement sovereign agreements. ASUU has returned to the trenches, and our children have returned home.
The children of Distinguished should also remain home!