Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU), today described Nigeria as the most terrorized nation in the world, ahead of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
University of Ibadan (UI) chapter of ASUU revealed this in a statement signed by its chairman, Professor Ayoola Akinwole, to mark 2022 Workers Day, stressing that Nigerian workers deserve a salute for surviving in a country that lacks workers’ friendly government.
The statement reads in part:
All over the world it would seem that the advances of civilizations and nations have been achieved at the expense of the workers. From the evolution of classifications of workers as labour, human capital and human resource (much like other resources in the production processes), we have witnessed radical negative valuation of the human person to such a level that we are now in an era when the worker is treated as dispensable and the human is regarded as a nuisance that should be replaced with technology.
Increasingly, the human person is mainly seen to be useful only as a consumer of sorts. The growing inequalities in the economic sphere have introduced a new dimension to modern slavery where everyone works for a few who morph between governments and large corporations. Humanity has become prisoners of governments and large corporations all over the world. Although the ideological dispositions of the oppressive elite classes may differ from place to place, there is a common purpose and common instruments that are used to ensure common outcomes; the exploitation of the vast majority of humanity by the few who have cornered the commonwealth of the human race.
The Nigerian situation has assumed a mythical dimension of failure. As now unarguably the most terrorized nation in the world, ahead of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, Nigerian workers carry on with their jobs daily at great risk, suffering additional humiliations of bearing the burden of political and financial corruption of those who are supposed to look out for the welfare of the people. Our country is a fiefdom of competing warlords, assemblage of official certified terrorists, carnivals of jesters and bands of thieves dressed in costumes and bemusing titular inanities.
The human development index in Nigeria bears no repetition. Ours has become a story of no and never (to workers’ demands); failure and fear (in genuine legal business transactions); death and disasters (using public utilities and infrastructures). We are lost in a labyrinth of leadership failure, mediocrity and vicious indolence. Our political elites are ravaging bandits, stealing our peace in the name of politics; disguised terrorists raiding our common patrimonies. Our economic elites are conniving mongrels. The traditional rulers no longer serve the deities and the ancestors. They are asleep to the cries of workers and now serve at the altar of mammon. They have sold their peoples to slavery and abandoned their sacred obligations to deities. Religious rulers now chatter prophets, prayer contractors, ministers of their bellies and priests of violence.
While workers are told to tighten their belts, politicians and their families are living large like medieval princes. In a land of mass poverty, our elites are sharing foreign exchange like sachets of water at party conventions. While governments owe pensions, their officials can afford as much as one hundred million naira to buy nomination forms. It is a time to ask questions and challenge the status quo. Nigerians are being taken for idiots!
The Nigerian people have been abandoned to the elements, to bandits and terrorists, to disease and scarcity. They are fed with words on empty stomachs and are nourished with promises that are never kept. Excuses are the strong points of policymakers and the past is waved in their workers’ faces to justify the failures of the present. The future is being ravaged daily by a political class, knowing what they have done; fear that the country is in the last throes of death.
The anti–workers’ policy and operations of the Muhammadu Buhari led administration has made Nigerian workers poorer. There is an increasing rise in the prices of commodities and services. This administration has failed Nigerians in the following ways:
- Non-implementation of minimum wage policy of the government by all the states;
- Inappropriate payment platform of salary which denies workers the opportunity to plan for the future;
- Embargo on employment in federal Universities has turned workers into slaves; workers have become hopeless because there is no succession plan;
- High level of insecurity has negatively affected safety the of life and properties;
- Political instability in Nigeria – more than ever before this government polarized the country along religion and ethnicity;
- Citizenship in the Nigerian state has been compromised due to the wrong attitude of the government that does not see the need to promote integration;
- The current administration cannot unite the country and provide the needed forum for the future; and
- Our youth have become negatively aggressive and have given in to moral lapses.
- A Salute to Nigerian Workers
The leadership of ASUU-UI wishes to salute the Nigerian worker on this day when workers are given a voice all over the world. Increasingly, the intended celebratory notes of Workers’ Day in Nigeria have turned into a day of lamentation when dirges are songs to fallen workers who have died in their numbers from poverty; as a result of unpaid wages, kidnapping for ransom, and unsustainable remuneration.
On this day, we observe moments of silence for the Nigerian people and workers who have been victims of terrorism and the brutality of the ruling administration. We stand still for women and girls who are victims of rape and sexual enslavement. Today, we remember the thousands of Nigerians who have been buried in mass and unmarked graves, with no opportunity by family and loved ones to bid them farewell; we share the grief of parents who are in mourning over their dead and missing children. It is sad to note that in the face of the enduring grief and hopelessness of Nigerians, the political class is in a frenzy of political carnivals. God shall indeed judge the wicked.
We salute the Nigerian workers whether in the formal, organized, public, private or informal sectors, for enduring the current affliction of mass poverty. We are all collectively victims of internal slavery meted out on us by our people who have organized themselves into bands of political thieves and violent merchants, religious and cultural entrepreneurs and tribal elite warlords. We call on all Nigerians not to be deceived by their antics which is to keep us divided, fighting spurious battles while they engage in a feeding frenzy of looting of our common patrimony. Our only enemy, our common adversary is the ruling class. They are our kit and kins, they exist in all the political parties, they run the affairs of the nation and are united in one common purpose of rapacious corruption, power-mongering and violent subjugation of the state for the propagation of their evil agenda.
We salute all unions currently engaged in diverse legitimate struggles for their rights. We call on the Federal Government to follow the path of honour and integrity by implementing its agreements with ASUU. It is instructive that the Minister of Labour and Minister of State for Education who are critical to the resolution of the ongoing dispute between ASUU and the Federal Government of Nigeria have abandoned their offices to engage in a campaign for the Presidential tickets of their party. Isn’t this instructive about the kind of leaders they will be if they become presidents? Moreover, Nigerians need to ask how they raised one hundred million naira for party forms given the fact that their legitimate earnings from actual work done by both of them do not amount to the sum of the ticket if accumulated over five years.
Nigeria is in dire need of purposeful leadership which does not have to be from any region of the country. For the first time in the history of this country, let us select leaders based on competence not on mere rotation. Nigeria needs a leader who can protect its citizens and rid the land of injustices.
As we look forward to the 2023 election, Nigerians should be ready to ask the right questions and refuse to be bought over to vote for the wrong candidates who will further condemn them to poverty. The resources available in Nigeria can be harnessed to cater for the needs of the people. More investment should be put in human capital to develop our areas of comparative advantage to compete in an interdependent world.
We salute ASUU members who are once again subjected to the instrument of hunger, especially during the recent festive periods of the Lenten/Easter season and Ramadan fast. ASUU remain the only Union in legitimate struggle whose members’ salaries have been stopped. Two months now without salaries, and still counting!
Who can sanction the Federal government which unilaterally and with such impunity discards legitimate agreements? We believe that the food they ate while they visited hunger on others will ask them the right questions.
We call on all workers to rise against the system that has turned them into slaves in their country. Nigerian workers should say no to the system that has turned Nigeria into a mass graveyard. It is time to stop the political class from their arrogant perpetuation of evil against the good people of Nigeria.
We demand a living wage for the Nigerian workers and call on all workers to unite to bring an end to the evil dispensation that is threatening to consume everyone.
Again, we call on workers not to allow this government to turn them against fellow workers to misrule us. Sustainable peace will only be possible when it is established on distributive justice and fairness to all.
Happy May Day 2022 to all workers in Nigeria.
A People United Can Never Be Defeated!
Yours in the struggle,
Ayoola Akinwole
Chairperson, ASUU UI
