ASUU As A Union Of Intellectuals

By Prof Joseph A Ushie

NEWSDAILYNIGERIA: The title of this contribution, “ASUU as a Union of Intellectuals” is itself as dogged as the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the union about which the write up is. If the title had not been dogged and resilient, it would have been ousted by something else following my reading of the putrescence spat at ASUU by one of its supposed members, Prof Godspower Ekuobase of the University of Benin. When I first read the Professor’s write up entitled “ASUU Is the Problem of Education in Nigeria”, my initial impulse was to give him a full response; and this would have meant dropping the present title, which I had previously made up my mind to write on, for something else that would address the nauseating content of his self-immolating vomit under the above title. Terribly unwholesome as that write up is, there are, however, some flashes of truth and reality in it. It is true, for example, that some members of ASUU, especially the younger ones, feel that the Union should drop from its seasonal demands the cry for the provision of infrastructure in public universities since neither the government nor the parents nor even the students do appreciate this patriotic role of the Union. It is also true that some members of the Union have been pressing on the leadership to drop the Union’s resistance to the introduction of fees by students from among its demands. The proponents of this argument often further strengthen their positions by referring to the relatively healthier salaries of medical doctors who have over the years concentrated strictly on their welfare issues to the exclusion of the state of infrastructure of their hospitals. But those who oppose this position, mostly the older members of the Union, feel that as intellectuals, it would be selfish for ASUU to narrow its concerns to just its members’ welfare matters as this would make the nation’s university system to follow the path that had taken the public primary and secondary schools to their present graves. To this extent, Prof Godspower Ekuobase is correct.

Secondly, his quarrel with the odious inadequacies of some of the lecturers is also a reality. In this case, however, his observation is like some of my students’ projects commonly dealing with how to improve proficiency in the use of English, but which themselves have enough errors of all kinds in their very works to serve as the data for the studies. In other words, Prof Godspower Ekuobase’s own write up is rich enough in all of the aspects of professorial reasoning and articulation of same to be used as an example of how bad some of the so-called professors can be. Given the pile of overgeneralizations, of illogicalities, of emotional outbursts and mechanical infelicities in English usage which falls below the standard of a university professor in an English-speaking country like Nigeria, we need not search anywhere else for evidence to justify his assertion that some of our professors are not exactly up to what they should be. His own outing here, like the cases of students whose essays, full of errors, are ironically often focused on improving the standard of English, is an eloquent testimony that all is not well with our university system. It would, therefore, be most inappropriate if I attempt faulting him on this position when his own very write up under reference proves him right. Very broadly speaking, his essay is richly laced with such level of reasoning that shows him as aloof from the system even as he claims to be writing as an insider. For instance, he does not draw a line between the individual lecturers who are only members of ASUU, and who, as persons, have the right to be involved in election processes, accreditation exercises, running for and holding administrative positions in the university system, etc, on the one hand, from ASUU as a registered entity, on the other. The “sins” he lumps on ASUU here are actually what individuals, who just happen to be lecturers and members of ASUU, commit on their own and are often prosecuted as persons rather than as a union. A more embarrassing display of his disconnection from the realities of both the nation and the university system is in his warm embrace in his write up of the IPPIS, a payment platform which even the government itself now carries on its neck like a goiter. For instance, is the Professor aware that IPPIS turned out the worst among the three payment platforms tested by the government itself? Is he aware that IPPIS was a main enabler in the former Accountant-General’s stealing of about 178 billion naira from the federal treasury? Is he aware that the IPPIS is now on oxygen in an intensive care unit where a powerful committee of ICT experts is trying to resuscitate the Government-embarrassed leprous platform? Even in my near-analogue state I am aware that the production or payment platforms is much a task performed by the computer and its wizards; yet here we have a case of a professor who displays his credentials lavishly as “Professor of Services Computing Department of Computer Science…” but would be starkly unaware of developments with the outcomes of computer-based testing of payment platforms in his own university system! This truly shows the sorry state of some of the professors in our university system as Prof Ekuobase himself has argued.

Further, the Professor’s use of English, as seen in his write up, is replete with avoidable whimsical punctuation and capitalization errors and other species of mechanical infelicities. And, of course, a counting of the one million number of instances he has used the exclamation mark in the writing would reveal how pathologically emotional the author was when he wrote the essay, or naturally is. Let me hurriedly make these two clarifications. It would be a show of arrogance to subject a colleague’s writing to such analysis especially when his area of specialization is not English language. That is not the purpose here. The attempt here is really only to use his own essay as a sample to support his position in his own write up that some of the so-called professors in the Nigerian university system are not up to speed in terms of the quality of their output. But, as a professor in an English-speaking country such as Nigeria is, I expect a much better performance of him both in quality of reasoning and in the use of English than what he has showcased here. As seen from the failure of both logic – or content – and expression in his own sample, I must concede to him that some of the professors in our university system ought not to have risen to the very peak of their calling. The many offending failures in both form and content in his write up were what tempted me most strongly to shift the title of this contribution to a reply to his vomit splashed on the patriotic and altruistic face of our noble union, ASUU. But, as I said earlier, this title is so positively stubborn that it refused to yield right of way to anything else; so let us leave this other distraction behind and resume our journey through the original path of “ASUU as a Union of Intellectuals”.

In his immortal Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe registers the wisdom of nneke, the bird, which says since hunters have learnt to shoot without missing, he, too, has learnt to fly without perching. Similarly, since in the very recent days many persons, some ostensibly hirelings of government, have decided to pillory ASUU over the current protracted strike by the Union, I felt it is necessary to explain what ASUU members, including its national officers, mean when they refer to the Union as one of intellectuals before the fault-finding mercenaries pick holes with the expression as Prof. Godspower Ekuobase echoed in his write up under reference. This is the main thrust of this contribution. Firstly, it is necessary to attempt a definition of the word, “Intellectual”. Still, we would precede this definition with an explanation of certain terms that co-occur occasionally with the word “Intellectual”. These terms are brilliant or bright, intelligent or smart, and wisdom. In its original dictionary meaning, the word “Brilliance” simply refers to one’s ability to reproduce facts or information received. It does not necessarily entail a processing of the information for the purpose of solving immediate problems except when the word is used in a certain context since its original dictionary meaning has been dissolving lately. Intelligence is more sophisticated as it entails one’s ability to understand and discern any given situation perspicaciously and proffer a solution to it, or create a way out of the situation. Wisdom is the grandest of them all. It is sublime, is based on truth and is not necessarily self-seeking as intelligence is often deployed. It is also the rarest, which was why Socrates said it is the property of the gods as no human is actually in possession of it. Being an intellectual implies being guided through reasoning towards wisdom and truth in one’s actions, statements or lifestyle, generally. This is one reason why a true intellectual is hardly swayed off his stance once he has, through the usual agonizing cerebral calisthenics, reached a logical point since this would be the true and wise path to follow. In the study of meaning in natural language, the narrow sense of which is commonly known as semantics, there are three ways of arriving at the meaning of a word or an utterance or sentence. The first is the dictionary meaning, with the various connotations of the word in question. Dictionary meaning is the one so far attempted of the word “Intellectual” here. The other ways of establishing the meaning of a word are to find out words similar to or synonymous with, or dissimilar to, or antonymous to, the word under discussion. Having attempted to offer a direct explanation of the word, we will now illustrate its meaning by showing from the concrete world of our experience the persons or groups by whose actions we would consider them intellectuals. Before listing the specific persons and groups, it is necessary to clarify that an intellectual is not necessarily a university professor, a PhD holder, a university lecturer or graduate, a senior civil servant or even necessarily a literate person. Anyone whose way of going about life goes through a careful and logical or reasonable path, and whose actions and utterances tend towards wisdom through this process is considered an intellectual. This means that we have intellectuals in all walks of life just as we can have some university persons who might be very intelligent but not really worth being called intellectuals because of how the courage to stand for what they believe in sometimes fails them in the face of lucre or threat to their lives or even to their material comfort. The concrete examples now follow.

The Athenian Socrates spent his life teaching and mentoring the young Greeks. A time came when he was accused by the Greek politicians of turning the youth against the authorities through his teachings. He was condemned to die by drinking hemlock. But before his execution, the authorities who convicted him, knowing that he was truly an innocent man, allowed some 21 or so days before he was given the hemlock. The idea was ostensibly to give him room to be whisked away by his disciples rather being killed. Truly, the disciplines made arrangements for him to be taken out of the country, but he refused the offer and scolded them. In the end he drank the hemlock most cheerfully and died even though he had done no wrong. That was an intellectual.

In Nigeria, there was once a military governor of the former Kaduna State, Col Abubakar Dangiwa Umar. While he was governor, he was offered admission to pursue a Masters degree at Harvard University. He resigned as Governor to go back to school. When he was interviewed on his decision he replied that being a governor was just a military posting which could not be compared with the rare opportunity of developing himself intellectually. That was the choice of an intellectual. Still in Nigeria, Prof Niyi Osundare of the University of New Orleans, the USA, was offered an appointment as a member of a federal government board. He turned it down for the reason that he was not consulted before being given the job, an act that he saw as a display of shortage of respect for him. He later asked a journalist, “If I accept the appointment offered me without first seeking my consent, what justification would I have if the government later completes the disrespect by removing me from the office without any notification? Would I be justified then to complain”? That was the posture of an intellectual. The late sage, Mallam Aminu Kano, was a very prominent Nigerian politician who could have made millions of pounds from the enterprise of politics if he had chosen to. But he never did. He lived among the people, owned just his one traditional house but used his huge intellect to fossilize such political awareness in Kano that has taken the people many rungs ahead of many northerners in political sophistication today. He was an intellectual. Another sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was from one of the three ethnic majority groups in Nigeria; but in spite of this privilege, he wrote books in which he canvassed for the relative autonomy of the nation’s ethnic minority groups. That was the stance of an intellectual. At some point the late Prof Chinua Achebe was nominated for one of Nigeria’s national awards. He turned it down for reasons related to his dissatisfaction with the running of the affairs of the country as that time. That was an act of an intellectual. Even in this bewitched country today, there are still hustling, indigent taxi drivers who would go the extra mile to return passengers’ bags with money forgotten in their cabs. These are intellectuals because they have come to realize the foolishness in taking that which does not belong to them. The late Kenule Saro-Wiwa was relatively comfortable in terms of material wealth; but he let go all that and sacrificed himself for the general good of his Ogoni people and the nation when he indeed had the chance to drop the struggle and live. That was the behaviour of an intellectual. In the course of the ASUU strike of the mid-1990s under General Sani Abacha, I had the rare privilege of hosting in my residence a meeting of the expanded exco of the Union. During the meeting, the then President of the Union, Prof Assisi Asobie, informed us that he had no fears at all moving around the country even then. According to him, if he ran from Abacha’s likely bullets into hiding, a mere mosquito might bite him and cause him to have malaria which might end up taking his life the same way as the bullets would. Was it not better he be shot dead by the guns while running the strike than to be bitten to death by a mosquito in hiding? That statement and his actions, which were based on his convictions, were those of an intellectual.

It is in the context of the above examples that ASUU members consider their union one of intellectuals. Firstly, as it is being strongly canvassed now by some members of the Union, as echoed by Prof Godspower Ekuobase of the University of Benin, all the members of the Union know that if they drop from their demands the pressure on government to provide the fund for revitalization, which never goes to ASUU but to the university authorities for the provision of infrastructure; and if they also agree with the government to increase school fees, the lecturers’ welfare profile would be robustly enhanced. Still, the Union insists on carrying the two extra items of luggage for the ultimate good of the nation’s university system in spite of the occasional backstabbing by both the student leaders and their parents and the general public. Further, during the struggle against the military for the restoration of this democracy whose dividends both the lecturers and their Union have been ousted from by the neo-military civilian administrations, some bodies outside the country reached out to ASUU with offers of financial support in the Union’s fight for democracy. The Union thanked them but politely turned down the offers. Year in, year out the members of the Union embark on strike actions and the government stops their already punitively low salaries, yet the members hold on stoically and with a Spartan spirit, as it is at the moment, even when hunger and disease are claiming some. Thus, while it cannot be all the members of the Union that qualify to be described as intellectuals, the Union as a collective is entitled to, and deserves to be seen as that of intellectuals since the majority of its members are robustly equipped with the credentials. This is what makes ASUU a union of intellectuals.

Now to the antonyms or what an intellectual is not. Unlike the true intellectual, a few illustrations of whom we have offered, there are the counterfeit or pseudo-intellectuals who could be brilliant and intelligent but would abandon the intellectual course if it conflicts with their personal interests, gains or if it threatens their corporeal existence. Nigeria’s current political scene is full of them, which is why the political party boundaries have become so meaninglessly fluid that hardly any of them would stick to a party consistently. Political appointees are not at all different. One reigning case is that of the current minister of education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, whose words in support of ASUU strike, when he was in opposition, are being used to haunt him now as a failed manager of the current strike. As an intellectual in opposition during the 2013 ASUU strike, he had said, “The nation owes a debt of gratitude to ASUU, and the strike should not be called off until the government accepts to do and does what is required. So, instead of hectoring ASUU to call off the strike, the nation should be praying for more of its kind in other sectors of the economy”. That, as minister of education today the same man has become a monster of the ministry who would treat the same ASUU like a leper just because of his present position makes the Honourable Minister a counterfeit or pseudo-intellectual, just like amoeba’s unstable pseudopodia. In the same circumstances under the military, his one-time predecessor, Prof Babatunde Fafunwa, acted as a true intellectual by standing with the Union, the result of which was the ASUU – FG Agreement of 1992.

There was Prof Daniel Pondei, no doubt a bright and intelligent man in his own right. But as the Acting Managing Director of the NDDC his intellect possibly failed him and he was alleged to have massively helped himself to the Commission’s N81 billion naira. When he was brought for questioning, Prof Pondei pondered over his situation and took recourse to his intelligence which presented him with the option of faking fainting; so he fainted his way out of the pillory. Several other Nigerians have similarly fainted their way out of investigations and probes. Those would be counterfeit or pseudo-intellectuals. Dr Chris Ngige has no doubt been an intelligent man going by his records even as a medical student and his meandering through the Okija shrine. He has the rare courage to weather storms and survive ugly situations. But evidently, when it comes to pursuing matters logically and altruistically, his personal interests and ego would overwhelm him as we find him now dancing more nimbly and brilliantly with his feet than taxing his brain patriotically and selflessly to get the nation’s university system out of the quagmire. In this season of hunger epidemic which spares not even the very most brilliant and intelligent, it has become very easy and cheap for the pseudo-intellectuals in government to recruit brilliant hirelings from among the brilliant but starving Nigerians to do for them the hatchet job of attacking ASUU for a fee. Some of these hirelings are, of course, also from among the pseudo-intellectuals parading as lecturers on our campuses. These are also usually the ones who hate strikes because strikes keep away from them their captive student victims on whom they would impose their books and handouts, besides other indecent deals. They are also the ones who would be distant from the realities of the nation’s university system and would not realize, for instance, that retiring from a Nigerian university and doing same from a European or American university is not the same. They would not appreciate the fact that retiring from a British university or civil service is like dying to reincarnate in paradise while retiring from a Nigerian university is like dying to appear in hell. Those are also the ones who would not understand, for example, that in the US professors stay in offices till past the age of 80 provided they are still strong, in order to mentor the younger generations. Such intellectuals would, hence, accuse ASUU of greed for securing the extension of a Nigerian professor’s tenure to 70 years, as Prof Godspower Ekuobase did in his recent essay. It is from among these that the more overzealous ones would “recommend” that ASUU should apologize to the same Federal Government whose actions are far worse than the usual contributory negligence, and have kept the children of the poor at home for about seven months. If ASUU apologises to the Federal Government, then who would apologise to ASUU and to the students and their parents and the Nigerian public whose education has been criminally mangled? Indeed, in Nigeria today the counterfeit or pseudo-intellectuals are legion, and by their stance on this long-lingering ASUU struggle we would know them.

Contrary to these examples of antonyms of the word “Intellectual”, it is today mainly in ASUU that we still have the North, the South and the West commingling and talking largely with one voice about Nigeria and her future irrespective of differences in origin, region or religion. And if this wingless airplane whose two engines have gone bad mid-air finally crashes on the shoulders of the pseudo-intellectuals piloting the plane, it is in ASUU and its struggles over the seasons that posterity will find the black box that would explain what had gone wrong with the once beautiful plane and its flights. Today, ASUU and its leadership can be pilloried, but the Union as an entity seems strengthened by the words of Mahatma Gandhi that “An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it”. Similar conviction and principle is what guides the actions of ASUU. It is what makes the Union one of intellectuals.

..Prof Joseph A. Ushie, writes from the
University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State