Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - ASUU, Please don't go on strike

And here's my small "debate" with a Facebook interlocutor.

Ndidi Uche Samuel So you expect a people who were not paid their entitlement to go to work? Especially in this period and time when coronavirus is ravaging the world. Other nations are creating palliative measures to cushion the effect of the virus and help the citizens…See More

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  Moses Ochonu Stop with the familiar ASUU propaganda and distortions. They already declared a two-week warning strike to force the FG to negotiate, and to protest the nonpayment of their February salary due to ASUU's refusal o enroll in IPPIS. That was before corona and school closures. Now, all schools are closed, so what good is a strike? What's the strategic utility of a strike when, a) schools are already closed and so the effect would not be felt, and b) when school, ASUU, strike, and IPPIS are the last things on the minds of Nigerians, FG, and people across the globe? My post is not about the issues in contention; I have my position on them. It is about the timing and strategical foolishness of the announcement of a national strike during an expanding global pandemic. So how will declaring an indefinite strike when schools are already closed and the FG is preoccupied with a national/global emergency get the FG to get rid of IPPIS and/or pay whatever ASUU claims is owed its members? Pick your fights wisely and know the right time to strike. Now, with this announcement ASUU has further damaged its already battered reputation and reinforced what most Nigerians already believe about the union--that it is an insensitive, selfish, stupidly irrational, and increasingly irrelevant, militant, and obstructionist body. How is that good for the long term image or interest of ASUU or its members?

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On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 12:32 PM Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:

Here's my facebook update from earlier today:

So the geniuses who lead ASUU reckon that today (as Nigeria and other countries deal with a deadly pandemic) is the right time to declare an indefinite national strike. And yet they wonder why they've become the butt of snide remarks and jokes about irrational intransigence, and why Nigerians now consider the union the most selfish, insensitive, and counterproductive force in Nigerian higher education. ASUU is now a byword for self-absorbed, narcissistic, and unaccountable militancy. Who needs detractors and critics when ASUU is doing an excellent job of destroying what is left of its reputation and image? Absolutely no sense of timing, strategy, optics, prudence, and common sense. And their leaders are PhDs? I want to puke.

On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 12:24 PM Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

I could not reach Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, Chairman of ASUU, before I wrote this. I will keep calling.

I have been pleading for two days for ASUU not to continue with its indefinite strike because of global circumstances around the Coronavirus and our collective citizenship. What is paramount should be how to be part of resolving a moment of depression and uncertainties among billions of people.

Oil revenues have also crashed. There is a global economic meltdown and all of us will pay a heavy price. Those of us planning to retire can no longer do so, thus blocking the way for others to enter the academy and moves it forward.

I have spoken with some ASUU folks, and hopefully, they will come together and realize that this is bad timing.

They should call off the strike and begin to put in place distance learning instruments to keep the students busy.

TF

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