No, Mr President, Enough is Enough!

By Prof. Abubakar Sabo

NEWSDAILYNIGERIA: In what many Nigerians thought was a sincere move to end the industrial action by university lecturers across the country for almost half a year now, President Muhammadu Buhari set a powerful team to negotiate with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on matters that have to do with salvaging the university from being privatised and perhaps other issues that affect their welfare.

The same President ordered another committee comprising salaries wages and income commission, budget office of the federation and federal ministry of finance to discuss, strategize and perhaps submit a report recommending an agreeable wage structure for the university workers.

The same President directed Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy via NITDA to come out with an acceptable payment structure consistent with the peculiarities of university workers.

The same President instructed (via Ministry of Labour) for the stoppage of salaries of ASUU members for five months and non academic staff for two months now while the negotiations are taking place.

The same President via his Chief of Staff consistently pleaded with the union to exercise patience and give another chance for his government to fulfill an agreement it signed in 2016, 2017, 2019 and a memorandum of action detailing how the agreement would be executed in 2021.

Discussions almost concluded and it has now reached his turn to fulfill what his government promised.

The same president now turns back to say “Enough is enough.”

That word should be used in addressing the shameful security situation we are now in.

It is pitiable for a country whose government claimed to have spent over 7 trillion naira on war equipments but cannot rescue her citizens from untrained bandits who ride motorcycles to nations capital and rescued their members from a so called maximum security prison while the president watches helplessly.

That enough is enough should go to the bastardised economy where a naira equivalence of US dollar is 600 and above.

A position the government which Mr President superintendent has put us in and made us a laughing stock by the international community.

That enough is enough should be addressed to bandits who attacked mr President’s convoy while on transit to daura While he was busy giving out his eldest daughter for a second or third marriage in the villa.

That enough is enough should be addressed to the shameful fuel queues we witness nationwide and the exorbitant price of our petrol while we still get huge revenue from the international market resulting russia/ukraine war.

Mr president should say enough is enough to the high corruption on industrial scale that characterises his government officials who are now facing charges by the security agencies.

Let him come out and tell us the parties involved in the 170bn largesse of the suspended OAGF.

If this is another tactic of bringing the clock backwards again, it won’t work.

Let Mr President come out and tell the whole world that he cannot honor an agreement he signed or his government signed with the unions.

That’s all!

For the avoidance of doubt almost all our children go to the same public universities we try to salvage and about 90% of the lecturers study for Post Graduate programs in the same public universities we fought to salvage.

We lost promotions, we lost salaries and we were intimidated on daily basis with hunger and other unpalatable issues. We fight because we believe what we do is the necessary option available to salvage our universities.

We are the right people to say “NO, MR PRESIDENT, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!”

Abubakar Sabo is a Professor of Accounting at the Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto and is the Immediate Past Chair of ASUU UDUS