The labour cum political war between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal Government of Nigeria is beginning to seem like it is never going to end and when two big wigs like this fight, the grasses suffer; the grasses here are the innocent Nigerian students in public universities who are forced to stay longer than expected in their university years due to the incessant strikes of the universities staffs union.
Every year that goes by, ASUU threatens to go on an indefinite strike and in most cases, they actually embark on the indefinite strike, because some promises that the federal government made to them are yet to be fulfilled or some contracts entered between the federal government of Nigeria and the labour union is yet to be fully executed.
Whether these acts of the federal government visa viz that of Asuu is politically motivated, that we cannot say; it is left for those at the helm of power to throw more light on what is causing the dog and cat fight between the government of Nigeria and the labour union or is it a spiritual problem?
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ASUU cannot keep going on strike every year at the detriment of the Nigerian university students and scholars; prolonging the number of years a student ought to be in school and further extending the decadence the Nigerian institutions are already suffering. The federal government on her part should carry out the promises made to Asuu, if they cannot execute or fulfill the all promises they made to the union on the negotiation table, they should at least fulfill some promises to some reasonable extent.
If education is really the bedrock of the Nigerian nation, then the Nigerian government, if they have the foresight and proactiveness, should not play around with the educational set up of the nation unless they want the nation to be educationally underdeveloped.
Can we say that ASUU is greedy or is the government of Nigeria tricky? This is the question Nigerians have also been asking themselves and the answer to this question lies the answer to the every year strike that ASUU embarks on. It is left for the federal government and the ASUU to come to a common ground and end this back and forth once and for all because when fights like these go on for long, the common man and the economy will always bear the brunt.
The justification for ASUU strikes over the years is the non-implementation of signed agreements between the federal government through the ministry of labor and the labour union. So ASUU asking the government to execute the contract they both entered and embarking on strikes over that reason does not make the labour union greedy rather, their reasons are justified, so it is the federal government that could be said to be tricky in this instance; if they are not tricky then there must be a political undertone which is yet to be fully explained to the people of Nigeria on why the government is yet to meet with the demands of ASUU over the years now.
Enough of the strikes!