After the stream of impotent, poorly written insults that some ASUU members hurled at me for pointing out ASUU’s inexplicably self-injurious poor information management, which allows the government to control the narrative of the ongoing strike, the national leadership of the union appears to have finally heeded my advice to have a real-time, rapid-fire response team.
That’s encouraging. Notice that the ASUU chairman’s choice of “rapid response” is similar to my use of “rapid-fire response” in my August 21, 2022, article titled “Cruelty to Students, Poor Info Management, and Partisanship Hurting ASUU.”
As a personal philosophy, I hate to hit people who are down. That’s why I haven’t read most of the bilious screeds written against me by some ASUU members, which could push me to respond in like manner. What the eyes don’t see, the heart does not grieve over.
Plus, I’m a friend of ASUU and identify with the broad goals of the union even though I sometimes think it’s hopelessly stuck in a time warp.
But I am glad that reasonable members of ASUU are listening and are making efforts to make amends.
I hope the next step would be for ASUU to set up social media handles and have them verified so that it can communicate in real time with the public, especially young Nigerians, who’re eager to get their side of the story in this battle for the soul of Nigerian universities.
Finally, ASUU needs to treat students not like enemies, but like the allies and young adults that most of them are.
You can’t threaten to arbitrarily and sadistically cancel an entire academic year’s worth of work that students have already completed because of an irresponsible government’s betrayal and lies and expect sympathy from students, parents, and social justice advocates like me.
ASUU’s threat is akin to a stay-at-home spouse deciding to go out of their way to intentionally hurt their helpless, defenseless children at home in a fit of vengeful anger because the stronger, bread-winning spouse chose to shirk their responsibility to the home.
Both the vengeful, children-hurting stay-at-home parent and the lying, irresponsible bread-winning parent are horrible people. That was the point at which ASUU lost me.
ASUU shouldn’t expect support from anyone for threatening to roll back work that students have already done in response to the federal government’s threat to withhold their salaries while they are on strike.
*Kperogi is Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at Kennesaw State University, Georgia, United States and a notable columnist