The National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, has warned members of the union against making their struggle look like a fight for their salaries and welfare only.

He said such a stance would make their struggle to look like they are fighting at the expense of having better public universities and nation.

Osodeke reminded ASUU members that some unions which made their salaries and welfare the focus of their struggles when they should have fought perseveringly for the survival, continuity and efficiency of public institutions and system lost their jobs and welfare at the end of the day when such institutions collapsed.

Citing some workers’ unions of moribund Nigerian Railways, National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), Nigeria Airways, among others, the ASUU president said the workers lost their jobs as those public institutions buckled and collapsed.

Osodeke said this at a ‘University-wide seminar with the theme: The Demands of Scholarship in the 21st Century, at the Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) in Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State.

The programme was organised by the ASUU national body and OOU branch of the union under the auspices of the Centre for Popular Education (CEPED) to enable members understand that the union’s struggles are not about salaries only but about quality university education for an egalitarian society with quality outputs, better funding and a better nation.

No fewer than 12 indigent students of OOU got scholarship grants from ASUU national body and the university’s branch of the union to cushion the effects of the current economic hardship in the country.

While ASUU gave grants of N200,000 each to two students, OOU – ASUU awarded N100,000 grants to each of the 10 indigent students.

Osodeke said: “We need to educate our members. We need to let them know why we are struggling and to let them know about the union. We also need to bring them up to the principle of the union. They need to know why we take some actions, like strike, because we have some new members among us.

“In my opening remarks, I said: ‘Immediately you start struggling for your salaries alone and the system dies, then you have no job again. That is why today, those things that we had in the 1960s and 1970s are not there again.’

“For instance, we used to have the Nigeria Railways. It was the best in Africa. But the workers left the system and were fighting for themselves and were fighting for their salaries alone. Today, there is no railway again, and they have lost their jobs.”

“But if they had been fighting for the system, fought to have the railways working from Calabar to Port Harcourt, Benin to Lagos, Kano to Maiduguri, and others, their jobs would still be working and the union would still be strong.

“The Nigeria Airways too used to have a strong union, but what do you have now? Also, see the (defunct) NEPA. The union leaders left the institution and were fighting for themselves. Today, NEPA is no more.

“The same thing is happening to the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT). The public primary and secondary schools are dead while private ones have taken over. When they are private, they do not unionise.

“Go to private universities. None of the private universities in Nigeria is unionised. Go to private universities and see what the lecturers are facing because they are not unionised. They are suffering, but they cannot speak out. In fact, if you see what lecturers in private universities are facing, you will be shocked.

“That is why we are left to speak for the institution. All our hospitals are going the same way. In fact, go to our government hospitals; they are not what you can be proud of. That is why when you have some level of commitment, we must struggle for the system. That is why we talk of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund). Today, we have public universities and they account for more than 95 per cent of universities population.” (The Nation)

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