End This ASUU Strike Now, Or ...Read more

Infidelity is often readily associated with marital unfaithfulness but Rev. Chris Okotie, chairman of the FRESH Democratic Party, FRESH, has used that word to illustrate and expose the predilection of our elected politicians with failed promises.

In an article titled, Asuu Strike: Implications of Political Infidelity, the Pastor-politician indicted our leaders for their infidelity with promises to better the lot of the masses. He put the blame of ASUU's stubborn refusal to budge in its deadlocked negotiations with government squarely on the penchant of our leaders to keep their promises.

The argument goes thus; if government cannot be trusted with fulfilling its part of an elaborate agreement it signed in 2009, ASUU's recalcitrance in the present face-off is justified. I buy into Rev. Okotie's argument that rather than blackmail the longsuffering lecturers, they should be commended for holding government to its promises. Perhaps, if we extend this to the larger issues of election promises; and the masses begin to hold our government to its pledges, the array of broken election promises would reduce drastically.

To underscore the federal government's lack of seriousness to an issue as fundamental as education, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Labaran Maku has said that government didn't know the cost implications of the agreement with ASUU when it was signed. He added that it was when they began to compute the cost during current talks with the lecturers that the reality of the huge financial outlay involved in ASUU's demand dawned on government. That simply goes to show the levity with which the federal government treats welfare issues involving Nigerians. The government only made those promises contained in the 2009 agreement just to put the lecturers to sleep without any genuine intervention of ever fulfilling them.

It is likely that until the present strike started on June 1, 2013, the agreement must have been dumped in a cabinet, like many other committee reports, where it must have gathered dust. When leaders are compelled to keep fidelity with their promises, society will be better for it. Where leaders are not accountable, they'd never have the incentive to render account.

In the oil-rich Niger Delta for instance, the guardians of our oil wealth are responsible for an unprecedented industrial scale theft of the black gold, which in 2012, accounted for an estimated N2 trillion, more than the current national budget. When confronted with this sad development in an edition of his Presidential chat, President Goodluck Jonathan dismissed it off-handedly by saying that what is being stolen is from our reserves; not official export quota!