Browsing through Whatsapp statuses two capital-case abbreviations, that I have become accustomed to, catch my eye. My familiarity with those names did not come about intentionally—but needfully. For it is between the organizations that those two words name, FG and ASUU, that my academic future hangs in the balance.
Why this frightful combination of ‘my’, ‘future’, and ‘hangs in the balance’?
The status I saw begins with the answer: STRIKE. an action that has become part and parcel of the Nigerian culture from the days of our military dictatorships. It prods government to action, to attend to the cries of the unpaid workers. Today those unpaid workers are my lecturers, not only of the University of Benin, but also of other federal and state universities under the trade union, ASUU.
The message comtinues: FG and ASUU resume talks on Monday. They will talk again, weeks after their last talk yielded no result. They will haggle again and again and again, prolonging the dreams of the student who needs his university education to open a law firm in his hometown, drawing justice closer to his kinsmen; destroying the belief of a student who plans his life, wishing that his four-year course actually lasts for four years; diminishing the little love that my generation, Nigeria’s youth, have for their country.
What more do we need to know that this prolonged strike is unhealthy? The ample time it provides for the large population of idle youths to become internet fraudsters. Already, I have become creative. Perhaps I should open a Facebook account of a Mexican-South Africans who needs money from anti-Trump supporters to enable his family cross the border into the United States.
Imaginative, isn’t it?
Why can’t my imagination be used for non-fraudulent things as continuing to study for my law degree? Why can’t the federal government pay what they owed
Why can’t I and my colleagues resume school?
#OSITA
Let’s join collectively to end asuu strike, let’s post our ordeal on our different social media platforms, especially Twitter and instagram tagging FG and ASUU and everyone concern, using the following hashtags.
#StudentsAreTired #EndAsuuStrikeNow #WeCantWaitUntilAfterElection
#FgandAsuuDontIncreaseOurAcademicYears
Together we can get the attention of the FG to implement asuu demands quickly
Brought to you by
UNIBEN-SHUTTLE And SHUTTLE TEAM
DESTINY UANZEKIN
