Let’s look for an alternative to strike

We should see ourselves as human beings and not animals in the jungle.

Government should quickly accede to the request of workers, while union leaders should also not take strike as the only weapon to fight the government to submission. With this, I hope 2014 will be free of strikes.

Last year, members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) went on strike for over five months. Medical doctors in the nation’s Federal hospitals also downed tools in protest against unfavourable working conditions. Whenever some unions want to demand for anything from government, they resort to strikes.

It is unfortunate that our labour leaders have come to see strikes as the only avenue through which government can be forced to accede to their requests. Whether ASUU got what it really wanted from government, no one really knows because the strike had reached a situation whereby everybody was tired, while expressing concern for the future of our students who will now spend extra months in school as a result of the disruption.

During each strike, there are bound to be loss of lives. Let us cast our mind back to the strike in protest of the January 2012 fuel subsidy removal. Some youths in Lagos, Ilorin, Kano, among other cities, were felled by police bullets.

During the last ASUU strike, some students who were on their way back to their parents’ homes in different parts of the country died in ghastly road accidents. We must not also forget that Professor Festus Iyayi of the University of Benin also died while going to Kano for an ASUU emergency meeting.

Many patients would also have lost their lives as a result of the five-day warning strike that medical doctors embarked upon in the country.
The list of casualties during a strike can never be quantified. We should, therefore, ask ourselves if there is any sense in going on strike in the first place, or if a government that is responsive to the yearnings of his people will allow certain professionals go on strike before it meets their demands?

Strikes are counter-productive to national development. During the subsidy strike, Nigeria lost hundreds of millions of dollars every day while it lasted. No one would be able to quantify the losses during the last ASUU strike. Apart from the souls that were lost, students who ought to have graduated in 2013 still find themselves in school in 2014, struggling to complete their studies. At this stage, the zeal and excitement to graduate would have been taken away by the forced ‘holiday.’

We should see ourselves as human beings and not animals in the jungle. Government should quickly accede to the request of workers, while union leaders should also not take strike as the only weapon to fight the government to submission. We have the industrial courts that can adjudicate in labour issues.

Although workers also go on strike in developed countries, but the frequency in Nigeria is just so irritating. While the ASUU strike lasted, there was this joke on the social media that new ASUU presidents must swear to go on strike during their tenures. This is the ridicule the union has brought upon itself despite claims that the strikes are meant to make government commit more towards developing our tertiary institutions. I hope our union leaders can look at other way through which it can make government fulfil its promises to workers in the country. Government itself must also not wait until workers go on strike before it does what is right for them. With this, I hope 2014 will be free of strikes.