Mallam Adamu Adamu, Get ASUU To Call Off This Strike

BY FAROOQ A. KPEROGI

I could have chosen to make this message private, but the ongoing ASUU strike in Nigeria’s public universities is a public issue that is literally putting the very lives of our young people on hold, that is choking their destinies, that is imperiling their today, and that is sapping the life out their dreams.

Mandela once said, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” Many of our youth who are in their creative primes are depressed. They’re depressed because of their government’s cruel insouciance in the face of a justified strike action by their teachers. They’re depressed because the government has robbed them of even the right to sleep and dream.

Mallam Adamu used to be one of ASUU’s staunchest and most passionate defenders when he wasn’t in government. After my September 25, 2021, column that requested him to not allow ASUU to go on strike, a mutual acquaintance reached out to me to assure me that Mallam’s pre-ministerial identification with ASUU’s advocacy hasn’t shifted but that his health struggles kept him away from his desk most of the time.

I’m delighted to know that he has bounced back to good health. In his chat with newsmen at the Presidential Villa on Wednesday, he revealed that he didn’t attend some meetings with ASUU because “I was in hospital in Germany.” Most Nigerian big men don’t like to admit that they’re sick, much less mention the fact that they’ve visited the hospital in a foreign land.

He said he wants a “peaceful resolution” to the strike but then undermined himself by saying “The federal government is ready to meet them on all issues they have raised and if there are so many meetings and the gap is not closing, then I think it’s not the fault of the government.”

No, it’s the fault of the government. ASUU had been extremely generous to the government by warning it of the consequences of its negligence and deliberate hide-and-seek tactics months before now. ASUU gets a lot of bad rap when it goes on strike, but people ignore how the utterly irresponsible behavior of the government triggers the strikes.

I won’t lie: I have profound respect for Malam Adamu. When he addressed me as “Mallam Farooq” (the highest titular honor a northern Muslim can give to a person) during a 2018 communication I had with him, and then proceeded to say, “and by Mallam, I mean ‘Teacher,’ for we are truly being educated every week”—apparently in reference to my now rested weekly grammar column in the Daily Trust—I was both flattered and honored.

So, I identify with him and truly want him to succeed. But his legacy is at stake now. He is in danger of becoming one of the worst ministers of education we’ve ever had if he allows this ASUU strike to linger on.

There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, in ASUU’s demands that the federal government is incapable of meeting, and that any sensible person would describe as inordinate.

…Twitter: @farooqkperogi