THE Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Nigeria’s celebrated and unfazed intellectual parasites, just declared their democratic right to pay for work not done — applause, applause!

And to push their cause in the deepest and most consuming of democratic sympathies, ASUU has declared its members, never-appreciated arch-patrons fighting for the eventual salvation of the Nigerian Academy, celebrated beggars, beggared by the very cause they love and fight for — tears, tears, drip, drip!

And why must ASUU not push for pay for endless strikes that undo the young charges in its care, instead of ceaseless teaching, that endow them? Why not?

If DisCos bill for darkness and get away with it, why shouldn’t ASUU growl for salaries, for endless strikes? Is that not a sacred right, which the harassed government have a sacred duty to fulfil?

And after King Kong ASUU has done it and got away with it too many times, who will stop it now? If past all-mighty military governments could not do it, is it this miserable civilian order, that has to dodge a fusillade of bullets from the cannon of citizens’ rights, that would prevail?

Pay ASUU its sacred due, jare — as the Yoruba would say!

That ASUU would grandstand and make such a claim, laced with the most cynical of sympathy pleas, just shows ASUU has reached its most unconscionable juncture yet: and may well be beyond redemption — expect a drastic re-set of its misguided brain!

The cheek of it: doing nothing and earning uninterrupted full pay, all through the drastc COVID-19 months, only to remind all it was still on strike! Does ASUU even know that many non-government workers, that worked through those lean months, did full time work but earned half-pay, or even less?

That is the ruin illicit sense of entitlement does to your mind! So, after getting full pay for no work, and projecting extreme insensitivity in abnormal times, ASUU would have the guts to declare the continuation of a strike — Aluta continua! — and turn cry baby because it’s not paid for its chosen fancy!

Besides, as committed and bristling revolutionaries, can’t ASUU members merrily embrace the cost of the cause they so love and would pull everything down to sustain? Or what’s the “struggle”, if your sworn enemy — sorry, opponent, the government — must pick the tabs!

ASUU knows it can get away with this barefaced hypocrisy simply because something is terribly wrong with this polity. People who are dumb enough to pushing forward with defective tactics should not wail when they earn their due strategic ruin. That is the path ASUU has chosen to tread. Defeat and ruin wait at the other end, as sure as the day follows the night.

Meanwhile, the silent but reasonable ASUU majority had better call, to order, their rash, reckless but loud minority. Those are led by the gung-ho ASUU executive — gung-ho on avoidable ruin.

When the crash comes, ASUU will reap more than celebrated penury of its members, because they had lost pay they had no right to, no thanks to their rippling bad grace.

They would have earned the historical odium of a band of reckless intellectuals(?) that crashed the Nigerian Academy on own heads. But maybe it’s already too late to cry. The ASUU head appears already off — too bad!

Source:- The Nation