ASUU Has No Reason To Apologise To FG - Fasina, Ex-ASUU President

Dr. Dipo FasinaFormer National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Dr. Dipo Fasina, was at a ceremony held in Lagos recently by the Campaign for Democracy (CD) to mark the 70th birthday of Chief Gani Fawehinmi. In this interview with DOYIN ADEBUSUYI and SEYI GESINDE, the former ASUU president speaks on burning national issues, especially the face-off between the Federal Government and the leadership of ASUU over the sacked 49 Unilorin lecturers. Excerpts:

You are here today as one of those marking the 70th birthday of Chief Gani Fawehinmi, what is your view about the activist?
My picture of Gani stemmed from working with him closely. We worked together on the alternative to SAP conference which led to the arrest of himself, Tai Solarin and Pa Imoudu by the military government. We also worked together on the Committee for Unity and Progress with Femi Aborisade and Asomba, who was at that time the president of the labour union. Gani has a vision for Nigeria , people usually see Gani as somebody, a lawyer, who is trying to change the society for the better but not much emphasis is placed on the kind of vision that he has.

The vision that he has is captured in some of the publications that we did together. Some of these publications include Committee for Unity and Progress, JACONS publications and the NCP manifestoes. If you look at all these publications, you would see that all the issues about his changing Nigeria fundamentally are part of Gani’s vision and that is a part of his outlook that is not stressed enough. I found Gani as somebody who could not tolerate insincerity and he wants to be sure about people whom he went into a battle with. But once Gani is sure that he could trust you everything is on with him. But what I know is he took himself and every other people seriously provided that he is sure where they really stand. Gani is someone whom I worked with and once he says let’s go he would go even if it costs him his life.

You were a former national president of ASUU, what is your view on the present controversy between the Federal Government and the union over the sacked 49 Unilorin lecturers?
What has been happening is unfortunate. There was this problem, we were on strike and our colleagues at the University of IIorin were sacked. But at that time, ASUU was also fighting President Obasanjo because Obasanjo felt that ASUU was one of the organisations impeding his getting away with the World Bank programme in education. So at that time there were people in Unilorin who believed that some activists were too powerful and during the strike, they sacked those people. The action went beyond the University of Ilorin , there are also political interest there, so together with Obasanjo, they found an ally in Obasanjo. And so given the power of the state, given the vested interest, the Obasanjo’s regime just decided that the University of Ilorin get away with those people. So they sacked those people for a strike.

But the leadership of the ASUU has met the present administration on the issue.
Yes, when Yar’Adua came, ASUU met him personally and he gave the pledge. Two of his ministers were at the meeting when the thing was discussed and they were the ones who proposed an out-of-court settlement. My own view is that President Yar’Adua has now found out that there are some political interests that are bigger than him that maybe he has to contend with, that he has to withdraw, and that is the unfortunate thing. All the issues are clear: The people were sacked for participating in a strike. The government that signed no victimization clause ought to have called them back but now the political interests is not allowing that. Unfortunately, ASUU trusted that he would keep his words but that have been lost.

You are a former ASUU president and obviously you fought for a lot of things which you considered wrong then within the system. So between then and now do you think some of those things you fought for or against have been changed or what do you think is the situation now?
I can’t say much about ASUU now, so I am not sure about what is going on there, it is the national president of ASUU that can really say much about the situation of things in ASUU.

What is your view on the ongoing probe panels instituted by the National Assembly in the power sector, NNPC, and other issues like the missing aircraft, a lot of revelations are already coming out?
The way the present rulership of Nigeria came by is still a subject of controversy. You remember very few people in this country believe there was any election anywhere in the last electoral processes. So whether you are talking about the Senate, the Presidency or any other organ, it looks like the elections were produced in a way in which they did not convince anybody. If you came in that way, then there is something like a moral political compulsion on you to trying to show that you are clean and that to me seems to be trying to win some acceptability from the public which knows that this whole set up was produced by fraud.

Do you foresee any positive thing coming out from the panels; I mean government implementing the recommendations of the panels?
The important thing is first to say what would they come out with, then you talk about whether what they come out with would be implemented. I find it difficult to tell; at the best what they will come out with is a sort of revelation of corruption. And as for me the level of corruption that will be revealed at best in that thing is nothing compared with the collective fraud that has been going on virtually everywhere. What we might then get is a picture that these people are trying to correct the wrongs of the past whereas actually we have not really started looking at the wrongs of the past. The whole class of the rulers is important to put them on trial; the election that brought them in, how those people, including those who are making the judgment, let us look at their past in the fraud that this country has been involved in since 1999 to 2003, that is when I think we would be serious. In other words what we are saying is that the reformers themselves need to be probed. It is like what we were saying when el-Rufai and Obasanjo were saying that they were trying to fight corruption, or when we were saying that Obasanjo did not mean all that he was saying, some of us were shouting that those people themselves needed to be reformed. But our people thought that we were just attacking them.

How then do we tackle corruption in this country?
My submission to that is to probe the whole class of the people, there is a way it can be done, but they are the ones who are making the laws. The legislators are the products of an election that most people are not ready to stand for. A lot of the people who are ruling are part of the fraud that has been going on since 1999, so how much of these do you want to reveal to make a difference? And the structures that they have kept down, the same economic structures that generated all the corruption since 1999 are in place. Those are the deep big issues of corruption; not probe. The corruption of the whole class, the corruption that is generated by the economy of the country and the politics, can you have anything but a corrupt government with the way in which they managed elections, with money they spent on elections. Can they have anything moral than a corrupt INEC with the kind of politics that they play. These are more fundamental questions not probe. I want them to catch whoever stole in the PHCN but don’t let them think that we have touched the issue of corruption; that is superficial.

What difference do you think exist between the past National Assembly members we had during Obasanjo’s regime and the present crop of legislators at both the state and national levels?
I think the past National Assembly members were more serious than the present. I think the National Assembly under Ghali Naaba with Farouk and others when I was the president of ASUU were better. I don’t know much about the present National Assembly members; all I know is that the election that brought all these people to power was fraudulent. But there must be individuals in the National Assembly who are good Nigerians but what is generally true is that most of these crops of National Assembly members came in through an election most Nigerians don’t want to be part of. But that also means that they have something to prove. I mean those of them who are serious would want to to show that they are not part of corrupt people who are brought in here. So I would not say that nothing good would come out of them, it all depends on those people among them who are serious about what they want to do and they can pull their weight through all this. We have had individuals in the last dispensation that stood tall among others. In the last dispensation, there was a committee for democratic governance, one that involved people like Sola Adeyeye; Uche Nyagocha, Bugaje and all the rest; those were people who cared about the country, even in this present crop, there might be some. The thing is to identify them and try to encourage them to do something for Nigeria .

Still on ASUU, the Senate Committee on Education has asked the leadership of ASUU to apologise as a way of forging ahead but the union has remained adamant, what is your view on this?
Apologise for what? You apologise when you have committed an offence. So if you can convince those people that they committed an offence, you can ask them to apologise but I cannot ask them to apologise because I don’t think it is an offence to go on strike, so they have no reason to apologise to either the government or the authorities of Unilorin.