Most appropriately, Professor Chris Piwuna, the new National President elected at the Academic Staff Union of Universities’ [ASUU] 23rd National Delegates Congress in Benin City at the weekend, is a Consultant Psychiatrist. He takes over from Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, who just completed his tenure.
Piwuna’s first task is clear enough. It is not to begin another round of endless negotiations with the Federal Government or even to call a total, nation-wide and indefinite strike over Earned Academic Allowances, University Autonomy, Revitalisation of Universities or Removal of Academic Staff from IPIS. No.
He should instead order all members of ASUU’s National Executive Committee to immediately report to his clinic, for their heads to be thoroughly examined. It is important to examine the heads of those who take strike decisions nearly every year, some of the strikes lasting nearly a year, keeping a million students at home, thoroughly disrupting academic calendars, leaving parents gnashing their teeth, fueling the sending of rich kids to foreign schools, only for the strikes to be “suspended” but never called off.
Let us see academic gowns lined up outside Professor Piwuna’s psychiatric clinic.
