A DISSENTING ASUU VOICE

If Dr. Deji Omole, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) Ibadan Zonal Co-ordinator, spoke for all card-carrying members of ASUU to the effect that “neither APC nor PDP can fix Nigeria” then I wish to use this medium to dissent that position. By the year 2015, it was widely known that Nigeria’s economy was growing at a fractional percentage point of a single digit greater than one, and that was why jobs were being created (those jobs have long since been lost in their millions). The team that President Goodluck Jonathan had in place effectively fixed fuel-crisis situation like we are experienced this last Christmas 2017: it was wonderfully commendable that commodity-price index was stable over a long stretch and thus Nigerians could reasonably plan their expenditure outlay. Commodity price stability achievement by a third world country should be awarded an A++ on an international macroeconomic commendation scale and this was the reason why “take-home pay” was reasonably sufficient to take care of the home front over a long stretch. Thus, let us not be caught in the APC’s oft-repeated and terribly misleading set-piece of “inheriting a rotten system;” the APC did not inherit a broken system because a broken system cannot sustain millions of jobs and stabilise commodity price. If the APC is fixing a broken system, how come the son of the president would go joy-riding and speed-thrilling on a motor-bike worth N56 million? This is a young man, somewhere in his mid-twenties, who has never worked to earn a kobo all his entire young life. Sunday Adole Jonah, Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State