Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: State of the Nigerian Universities in PHOTOS and Our National Legislators earns N15,000,000,.00K a month!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - Go to Abuja and you see Legislators buying mansions with huge monies WHILE THE UNIVERSITIE

"I believe in trade unions and I believe that unions have a right to negotiate better terms for their members. But I believe that unions also have a duty to make concessions and sacrifices for the continuity and improvement of the sector in which they operate, in which members earn their living. More importantly, I believe that a union should not lose sight of the human subjects (and consumers/victims) of its members' work, especially when the union wants to be seen not simply as a trade union but as a catalyst for reform."
MEO

Oga Moses,
Again, you nailed the issue with conciseness. I wrote recently elsewhere that ASUU is locked in what we can call the union-imperative. If as Prof. Ogungbemi just posted, ASUU is a union concerned with the welfare of its members, then there is a serious problem.

I see the dilemma as that of how to square that union-imperative with the claim to agitate for the rehabilitation of higher education in Nigeria. How, that is, ASUU can successfully manoeuvre in the interstice between its members and the students as the 'non-ASUU constituency'.
I don't think this is a genuine dilemma, as your comment revealed. These aren't mutually exclusive objectives. Yet, the emphasis on the allowances/salary component of the Agreement seems to ring alarm bells.


Adeshina Afolayan

Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN

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From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>

Sender: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2013 20:28:00 -0500

To: USAAfricaDialogue<usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

ReplyTo: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: State of the Nigerian Universities in PHOTOS and Our National Legislators earns N15,000,000,.00K a month!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - Go to Abuja and you see Legislators buying mansions with huge monies WHILE THE UNIVERSITIE

Tunji,

Please go back and look at the so-called agreements and MOU. Bolaji has done this discussion a great deal of good by posting them earlier. They are broad, fantastical documents of general principles based on assessed needs. They are NOT (repeat, NOT) specific in any sense. They do not address any specific infrastructural needs that affect students and learning. Did you see the section regarding the 1.3 Trillion naira? That section and others demonstrate clearly that the ASUU negotiators did not really care about the funding issue. Why should they, when they don't think students deserve a fair shake as the primary consumers of the products of our higher institutions? The so-called agreement and MOU on funding read like afterthoughts that were haphazardly cobbled together after ASUU got the specific promises and concessions regarding allowances and perks that it wanted. When it comes to the allowances, there is remarkable specificity but when it comes to the funding that ASUU claims as the centerpiece of its struggle, there is shockingly little specificity and plenty of unbelievably bureaucratic nonsense about "agreeing to recommend," agreeing " to take up with the relevant authorities," etc.

I believe in trade unions and I believe that unions have a right to negotiate better terms for their members. But I believe that unions also have a duty to make concessions and sacrifices for the continuity and improvement of the sector in which they operate, in which members earn their living. More importantly, I believe that a union should not lose sight of the human subjects (and consumers/victims) of its members' work, especially when the union wants to be seen not simply as a trade union but as a catalyst for reform.

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