ASUU and our president’s ‘democratic’ destiny
ASUU National President, Prof Biodun Ogunyemi Photo: Twitter
Let me begin with an apology: last Friday I told dear ASUU people and comrades and all readers of this column to read Second Kings Chapter Six for the story of Jehu. It was an error from a failed enthusiastic pen. The chapter I actually meant was/is Chapter Nine. Of course Jehu is unfailingly hurrying near.
This being said let me now straightaway begin my actual record today with a piece of democratic advice or criticism I generously will give our president on one major blunder of his ‘democratic’ presidency so far. This big blunder, without mincing words, pertains to the on-going strike embarked on by our country’s only standing significantly patriotic union globally known as the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). The strike is a patriotically genuine and honest action taken by this country’s – our country’s – most democratic and articulate union that has been more sinned against than any union or association or group by successive central governments especially right from when the military chaps assumed political power/leadership in our land. Our president, whom I have aptly called here “President Taciturn,” on account of at times his inglorious silence on many burning blunders in the land, should cease to be silent no more on the ASUU strike. He should halt his autocratic silence and set out and forth his democratic tongue necessary to placate our most enlightened union committed to making our nation a true nation of enlightened democracy in the modern world of ideas, scholarship and knowledge.
Or is our president too incapacitated to preside over our country’s affairs to the extent that several minions of his presidency now take charge of his tongue and thoughts? Indeed, the servile and fawning ministers and agents of his administration seemingly are happy to prolong his incapacitation in order to entrench themselves as essential and strong and powerful runners of our president’s autarchy.
In fact, they have turned themselves into the cabal of this presidential dispensation. They have turned themselves into Nazis whose Nazified concoctions have been causing concussions in our universities (and in the land). They have turned themselves into tin gods without adherents. Is this because President Taciturn is badly incapacitated? It is not wrong to ask this question as many times as we deem fit until the president who must prove his mettle proves his mettle by taking charge of his presidency and lead us as president fully and realistically. Or is his presidential destiny what it is now? Is this his actual presidential destiny?
I admitted openly here last week that the Supreme Spiritual Masters of Merit admonished me to drop interest in the Ondo gubernatorial election which has come and gone, but not truly gone. (Forget here what we mean. But we are working to see that no bad boil should befall the state and State of Ondo). One significant thing I said was that I was charged to channel my spiritual thoughts and energy towards our country’s bigger problems, which the lingering ASUU problem headed. Unless the struggle, the on-going struggle, more or less unconscious or seemingly incapacitated president and ASUU is resolved now to the advantage of ASUU, honestly speaking, our political inevitability will become almost inevitable.
And President Taciturn’s or President Taciturnity’s prime blunders which his unnecessary war with ASUU heads shall be the consummation of the triumph of what he and his minions don’t want, but which shall surely happen unless he does rightly now what he rightly must do now for ASUU. We say this as a spiritual advice and as a spiritual warning as well to our president and his Nazified presidencynologists in Abuja and in the respective states. We don’t want them to gasp the gasp that they should not gasp. We are humanists who wish them to be humanists as well.
Now, all of us are familiar with one unknown but now well-known Nazi in the presidency. He recently called University lecturers farmers. He would have been right if he hadn’t used the label derogatorily. Honestly speaking, our lecturers, all genuine members of ASUU, are farmers. They are growers, planters of ideas and knowledge in their students. Their students are the tubers of yams, the crops, the nourishing vegetables and tantalizing fruits of knowledge they plant and harvest for the development of our country. Without university lecturers (and teachers generally) who grow and plant plants and trees they tender everywhere in our country, our people would today have been thoroughly described as a thoroughly savage and uncivilized species of the human species and race. Governors, fraternal organizations, industrial beacons and icons, all refined and cultured developers of our society were grown, planted and built by teachers, by university lecturers who teach other grades of teachers.
I should stress and under-score the point further. University lecturers in all disciplines are bricklayers, masons, gardeners, engineers, surgeons and more. They mould blocks. And their students are the blocks they mould. Their students are the weeds they clear and trim for our human society to grow and develop well and beautify the landscape, waterscape and airspace of this country, our dear country. Each enlightened and perfected human being (in our country today) constitutes the temple of our human society. The Nazis everywhere in the land today were not “farmed” to be Nazis. They were not planted and grown to be what they are now. Where they picked their despotic, fanatical, inglorious habits only they can tell us when they face the coming deluge or when the coming deluge descends on them.
A leading enlightener and supreme head of the Supreme Spiritual Masters of Merit of the Universe leading the service of the public good for our country was a class-room teacher. She is not resident in Nigeria. I won’t say more than necessary. But all ASUU members should know this: she and her members are benevolent spiritual labourers and farmers. They are bound together by “obligations of mutual helpfulness” and the service of ASUU’s success in their struggle to uplift our country from the confinement of the Nazis.
For the benefit of ASUU members, I would like to end with the following message sent me by a Christian pastor and enlightener of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), who prophetically confided in me that ASUU is fighting a just and righteous cause for our motherland and fatherland that has been spiritually won:
“An army once went to war on the island. On seeing the size and strength of the opposition, they were afraid and sought their commander’s permission to retreat. In response, the commander burnt the ships that had brought them, declaring that there were only two options-fight or die. No going back. They fought, and in the end, won. This is how you should approach temptations. Burn the ship so there is no option of returning to sin. Fight your way into Heaven and you will win in the mighty name of Jesus.”
How relevance is this to ASUU president and members of ASUU? No member of ASUU should fall and fail to fight for Nigerian Universities to jump into the Heaven of Academic Excellence and Perfect Knowledge. No one should commit the sin of not fighting for the eternal redemption and everlasting glory of our universities. Each and every member of ASUU must resist every deception and all temptations to break their rank. They must stick together and reject all perks of deceptive grandeur tempting them to jettison their gloriously crucial strike of all strikes. O my brethren, you have won! Be together. Stay together. Remain solid as ever. They won’t and can’t do more than they have done to kill your resolve – the Nazis.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.
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