ASUU Strike: Minister Adamu’s Unacceptable Walk Out On NANS

Nigerians perceive their leaders as a bunch who thrive in impunity and are dispassionate about those whose affairs they superintend over. This perception was further reinforced by what transpired at the Federal Ministry of Education office in Abuja last Monday. There, the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, walked out on a critical stakeholder in the sector he holds public trust.

Heaven has not fallen since then as he is still sitting pretty in his office. As is usually the case, Nigerians are already moving on from the deplorable act captured in footage that trended online, perhaps expecting the next episode of in-your-face indiscretion by those who should be public servants. Naija News insists that it is a no-no for leaders to carry on as if they are doing the citizenry a favour by holding public offices.

What are the issues? The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on February 14 embarked on a one-month warning strike over the failure of the government to implement an agreement entered into with the university lecturers. This warning strike came after a nine-month industrial action embarked upon by the union two years ago.

The usually laidback National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) got exasperated with the incessant disruptions of the academic calendar and embarked on a nationwide protest. It is often said that when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. This grass was not ready to continue suffering hence the students took charge of their future as they blocked major highways in protest.

READ MORE:We won’t make gunpoint negotiations with ASUU, says FG

Unfortunately, this reawakening by the long-suffering Nigerian students soon became an anticlimax. This was when the NANS leadership was granted a rare audience by Adamu who has been playing possum as the Minister of Education. During the last protracted ASUU strike, Adamu was rarely seen at the negotiation table with aggrieved lecturers. The usual images were those of the Minister of state for Education and the Minister of Labour and Employment doing the heavy lifting at the time. It wasn’t even as if Adamu was engrossed with the concerted efforts by the whole world towards mitigating the challenge posed to learning by COVID-19 which was raging at the time.

On Monday, the students took their protest to the doormat of the Minister and what did he do? He bungled the opportunity to placate and restore hope to anxious Nigerian students in a fit of Narcissism.

This botched meeting which followed the picketing of the Education ministry’s headquarters in the central area of Abuja threw up some issues which NaijaLiveTV considers quite troubling.

The Minister’s poor choice of walking out on the students at that auspicious moment exposes poor decision making which is the bane of public service in Nigeria. Nigerians can better understand what goes on in the inner recesses of the Buhari government if someone at that echelon could take such a rash decision without being reprimanded.

The Minister left the meeting after a terse response to the juvenile radicalism of the NANS President, Sunday Asefon. In an audacious address to the Minister, he said, “This is your second term in office, your salary will be paid.

The salaries of the lecturers will be paid. We want to really know what is really happening. Honourable minister, you celebrated your son who graduated in a country, in a university outside this country. We appreciate that. Our parents do not have that money to send us outside the country, but we are in this country. We should enjoy what we are paying for. We want adequate funding of education in this country, honourable minister, our message is that we want to go back to class. We want our schools to be open.”

READ ALSO:BREAKING: ASUU calls off nine-month old strike

Responding, Adamu said, “Perhaps the only point that you made that is even worthy of attention is that you said students should be involved in this (discussion) and I think it’s probably a good thing.

And it’s the only thing I’m going to take from everything you have said here. Thank you.” That said, he stormed out of the meeting, leaving the students to their own devices. It is apparent that the student unionists came for the meeting unprepared and didn’t envisage that their protest would bring them that far to the powers-that-be. Yet, this cannot excuse some of the false and infantile arguments hurled at the Minister by Comrade Asefon.

Nigerians are nostalgic of the golden era of students unionism when they pressed for “Ali must go” and exerted so much pressure on the government. It will be a tall order bringing back this era when the NANS President cannot rise beyond unproductive jabbering to make intelligent and compelling presentations on the way out of the incessant standoff in tertiary institutions.

If Asefon and his comrades had done their homework, they would have reminded Adamu of his days as a newspaper columnist when his articles were sympathetic to the ASUU cause.

They could have also sought to know what the Minister and his Ministry are doing to find a lasting solution to the issues at stake. It’s not just about wanting to go back to their classes, how sure are the students that the same classes won’t come under lock again in a few months’ time!

With the absence of hands-on leaders in Nigeria who can leave their cosy offices to get firsthand information of goings-on in the field, the NANS leaders should have used their chance meeting with the minister to tell him what he may never know about the state of infrastructure and the quality of learning in the nation’s ivory towers.

This is another reason why it is unacceptable for Adamu to have walked out of that meeting. If truly interested in making a positive impact on the education sector, the Minister, who has never held any town hall in the universities, should have mined information from his visitors, especially given the fact that the NANS leadership who came to meet with him were drawn from various universities.

What is public service without research and feedback?

Sadly, an opportunity to gain these two valuables were thrown away by a short-fused minister, leaving the country he is supposed to be serving worse for it. This among other considerations make Adamu liable to much blame over the botched meeting with leaders of Nigerian students.

Given that the NANS president is young enough to be his grandson, he should have held the higher ground by sitting through the peskiness of the students or better still taking charge of the conversation.

NaijaLiveTV expected that Adamu should have restrained himself from walking out in line with the noblesse oblige philosophy of the French. A high ranking official of an administration in its denouement must be careful not to create such a scenario as the defining moment of his stewardship.

The Minister will be well advised to quickly reach a rapprochement with the NANS leadership. Let them hold civil engagements, and with other critical stakeholders towards the return of industrial harmony in the nation’s public universities. For Pete’s sake, these incessant strikes are putting the future of Nigerian students on hold and causing them emotional trauma. Enough is enough already!

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