By Sola Balogun
Like a fiery lion chasing its hapless prey, Chris Ngige has once again unleashed his infamy on Nigeria’s university lecturers. His latest onslaught is the threat to withdraw ASUU’s registration certificate for allegedly refusing to submit its audited accounts of five years to government.
The Minister of Labour and Employment who is apparently savouring what Kiss Daniel refers to as ‘Buga’ of his office recently received University lecturers in the medical field and used the occasion to vent his unwarranted disdain for the Union of intellectuals and their allies in the academia.
He accused ASUU members and those of SSANU, NASU and NAAT of flouting the law, alleging that all of these unions have not been reporting their audited accounts to his ‘exalted’ office under which the registry of Trade Unions is domiciled. As a justification of dragging ASUU to the NIC, Ngige hinted that all the unions have not been obeying the trade union’s laws.
The first question to ask Ngige is what has the audited accounts got to do with his FG’s refusal to honour its agreements with ASUU and the other unions?
And Is the government going to use the audited account to determine its role in funding tertiary education as at when due? Has government received any petition of infraction or corruption from members of any of the unions? Does Ngige believe that all other sectors of the economy are as corrupt as his own political constituency?
If Ngige feels or insinuates that leaders of the Union are corrupt, may we also ask him how he got the 100 million naira he used to purchase the APC presidential nomination form?
The ‘Honourable’ minister and his co traveller in the Education ministry have already shown much disrespect to lecturers through the ill treatment meted to the Briggs committee and the CVC and Pro- chancellors who were ironically engaged by the same government to intervene in the prolonged strike and the face off between FG and ASUU.
All we can tell Ngige and his cronies in government is that ASUU members would one day be vindicated in the on going struggle to get our educational sectors on the right footing in this country and the likes of him and his principals would have their names written in the column where they truly belong in history. The government may go on and proscribe ASUU, that would definitely not mark the end or failure of members of the union or prevent them from attaining the levels which God and posterity have in store for us. Solidarity for ever!!!