ASUU, NASU, SSANU, ASUP, NUT, NARD, NANS, PENGASUN, NUPENG. These are some of the labour unions in the country whose popularity or notoriety has been permanently etched on public memory. When they sneeze, everybody catches cold. They possess enormous powers meant to do good for their members and for society but since power corrupts, they have in recent times, chosen to sometimes use their power to do great evil against society. Sometimes you cannot but come to the conclusion that like toys in the hands of babies they just take delight in flaunting the power they wield for no great reason at all. They perhaps think that any power unused is no power at all so they just throw their weight around. A few years ago, a tanker driver was killed by a soldier at a road block somewhere in Bauchi. Now, this is an evil that Nigerians have become somehow familiar with as characteristic of their men in uniform. Other Nigerians of lesser stuff would have carried on with their lives dismissing it as one more example of the enemies having done their worst again. But not so our compatriots in PENGASUN. They said they had had enough of uniformed men’ brutality against their members and proceeded to use their power to punish the whole of Nigeria. They withdraw their tankers nationwide from supplying fuel to the Nigerian economy. Social and economic activities were paralysed for a few days before reason prevailed. Their display of naked power cost the nation billions of man-hours and billions of Naira loss in revenues and several lives were lost. ASUU. This one has become a law unto itself and its story needs not be told here because it has become a living nightmare to all reasonable Nigerians. In the past twenty or so years ASUU has been frequently on strike. It is either ASUU is on strike or when it calls off a strike other unions in the higher education sector will embark upon their own to ask for the favour ASUU has just won. It is because of ASUU and the dog fight between it and rival unions that the word ‘parity’ became a major issue in labour unionism in the country. When ASUU gets a concession after waging a crippling strike, other unions in the sector will proceed on their own in order to get ‘parity’ with ASUU! I do not know whether it is purely coincidental or it was something deliberate that the abbreviated names of our labour unions sound so frightening and tend to conjure the image of a group of people who are mentally unbalanced! As someone given the sunny side of life I cannot help noting that some of the names sound so anarchical. They tend to sound a note of warning of the intention or mode of operation of the union leaders. Take the very name of ASUU. It tends to suggest that it will permanently be sueing the federal and sometimes state governments in the court of public opinion for one offence or another. And it has been doing just that in the past few years. Take the union call ASUP. It sounds to me like its members are intent on putting the nation in hot soup! And the leaders have not always hesitated to act according to its name, showing that there is something after all in a name. Whether there is something in a name or not, what we have on our hands is that some ambitious, misguided and power-hungry men have decided to compete for the public space with elected officials. The truth is that we are today faced with the grave danger of irresponsible trade unionism. While we have been contending with the problem of weak, clueless and unaccountable government, we have, added to our woes, unreasonable, unpatriotic, insensitive and grossly irresponsible labour leaders. As I see it we seem to have arrived at a juncture where we have a group of people who think that this country exists to provide jobs for its members and that those members do not owe any duty to the country and that once the interests of members are satisfied, all is well and the rest outside that fold can go to blazes. This mindset is clearly behind the unreasonable behaviour of ASUU leaders who believe that since education is critical to a nation’s growth and development, those who are privileged to work in that sector should have no qualms holding the nation to ransom in the name of promoting education. I think it is unacceptable for a group of misguided intellectuals to come to the conclusion that because education is critical, a disproportionate share of society’s resources should be channelled to that sector, or more appropriately, to those who work in that sphere or else the entire society will be held to ransom. What if some hot heads decide that it is not education but food, shelter, safety and healthcare in that order, that should take precedence over education? What if they proceed to also hold us all to ransom in support of their viewpoint? What will become of our society and what will those intellectuals do who think education is the most important? What will our book men do if farmers go on strike and withhold food supply for four months as the bookmen have disrupted education for four months? From what I can see, in spite of the bluffing by the ASUU leadership, those bookmen will call off the strike one day. But when they do, we should not heave a sigh of relief and go about our normal duties. Rather, we should see their frequent disruption of the school system as an opportunity to reflect on labour unionism generally in our country. This is because it is clear that we have some irresponsible and unreasonable people who have taken charge of some of the critical organs of government and have proceeded to use it to ruin society rather than seeking to advance its good cause. This is hoping that there are some sane, patriotic and responsible labour leaders who will have the wisdom and courage to sit some of our union leaders down and tell them one or two home truths because what we are having in the name of unionism is an invitation to anarchy and more alarmingly, an invitation to a dictatorial sledge hammer to be applied to restore sanity. Anyone who wants to become a politician should leave unionism and declare for a political party, seek for an office and canvass his views on certain public issues and if his ideas are acceptable by the majority, he can have the mandate to rule. For me, it is a form of corruption for some people to hide under certain platforms and exert undue pressure and hold the nation to ransom because of their personal and sometimes jaded or jaundiced ideas about society.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 20:42:03 +0000
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