ASUU and Solidarity Tradition We Met !! By Adeola Soetan
ASUU and Solidarity Tradition We Met !! By Adeola Soetan.
ASUU and Solidarity Tradition We Met.
The VC called me to his office as students union president & gave a “fatherly” secret advice: “Deola, pls don’t involve yourself and the students union in a coup matter, Prof. Olorode & Dr. Awopetu are said to be held in connection with Okar’s Coup. Please don’t go to Lagos or anywhere for their case because I learnt you are already mobilizing,…”
My response was very simple: “Sir, you are supposed to have been arrested with them too, because in any barrack where coupists are arrested, the Commanding Officer is also always arrested for interrogation or trial. Since you are the VC, the head of the institution, and you believed that your lecturers can be involved in a coup, then I think you should be arrested too” Case closed, no more talk on that issue.
And we went to Igbosere High Court the next day against all odds in solidarity with our lecturers, our comrades, ASUU frontline leaders who were wrongfully arrested right there on Great Ife campus because of their patriotic role in the struggle against education commercialisation aka approximate pricing of university education, which Buhari regime wants to do now. They struggled for academic freedom, democratic government, improved infrastructure and better pay for lecturers.
The day the two famous lecturers (who were teaching what they were not supposed to teach) as IBB described radical lecturers then, it was a voluntary lecture boycott by the students themselves to welcome Olorode and Awopetu. I met a full Oduduwa Hall & students in high spirit when I returned from Ibadan press appointment
That was the tradition of solidarity between ASUU, students and the old NANS that we met from the Femi Falanas, Lanre Arogundades, Owei Lakemfas, Segun Sangos, etc and the tradition we left before the arrival of the unprincipled “cracks” in the new NANS.
I Stand with ASUU because if public education is commercialized as succesive governments and Seriki Integrity regime wanted, majority of the students would withdraw from schools. And education would be exclusive privilege of the super rich mostly corrupt government officials.
A government whose Godly Accountant General can saintly steal N107 bn “pere” ( or is it misappropriated using the language of the ruling class) and religious people can steal crude oil with the fear of God and pay subsidy for 36 million litres of “unknown petrol” can turn our university around to meet global standard, pay ASUU & other university workers well.
Adeola Soetan 08037207856
