I am not happy at the ordering of the current ASUU log of demands. The issue of the welfare of members should not be relegated to the background.
It’s so sad. Other pressure groups like NMA, NLC, TUC, Nursing group, Civil servants, and many others rarely argue on hospital facilities or workplace facilities. The emphasis is always on the welfare of their members.
I don’t know what proliferation of universities and illegal dissolution of governing council will add to our take-home pay in this austere time. I dont know why ASUU leaders can not do what the union did before we had the 1992 agreement. The union went all out to publish salaries of academics region by region of the world.
The union used academics and other sympathy groups in the diapora to our advantage, protesting in all the continents of the world in our support. We then settled for African average. The then IBB government had no choice but to settle our case. Later, somebody called our agreement an imperfect obligation on the part of government. I can not find such publications anywhere to support our present struggle.
There is no international pressure against the government in our support as we had before. The federal government keeps insisting that less than 30% of annual university admission applicants are ever admitted.
They look at the education market as versatile for state and federal government to help themselves, perhaps using state resources, cornered to do so at the expense of all of us. Since we do not have political power, we have to use what we have to box the rulers to submission.
I dont know why ASUU is not making the issue of full salary at retirement as pensions for retired professors at 70 years, a frontline demand. The federal government some years ago made legislation on that which nobody implemented at the moment. Why can’t that be on the priority list of our demand.
Sooner or later each professor will retire one by one and then experience the continuation of slave wages which we are earning now, while argueing against proliferation of universities, which govts see as a way of providing jobs for uncountable jobless MSc and PhD holders. Let ASUU leaders think along this line.
