Crooks exchanging leadership baton in Nigeria - ASUU

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), has described the current leadership in Nigeria as crop of crooks, warning that their continued stay in the corridors of power will keep the Nigerian situation further deteriorating.

The national president of ASUU, Nassir Fagge, who expressed the concern in his address at the opening of the 18^th national delegates conference (NDC) of the union at the University of Ibadan on Friday, noted that with the level of impunity being exhibited by the corrupt Nigerian leaders, ‘the political landscape is increasingly becoming intolerant and desperate’.

While attributing the frightening security situation in the country to failure of the successive leaders to provide responsible governance and quality education, Fagge called for the overhaul of the economic model of Nigeria which, according to him, allows for wholesale stealing under the guise of privatisation.

"We believe that the Nigerian people are not being presented with sufficient options to choose from. The same crop of crooks are recycling themselves from one party to another to scramble for power. We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect different result. The ruling elites have systematically edged-out the people from governance equation. This crop of looters in garb of rulers pretending to be dealers cannot create the Nigeria of our dreams. We have a huge burden of responsibility to raise the consciousness of the people to demand for power through a legitimate and transparent electoral process.

"Why is it that our rulers are not only taking us for granted but are openly contemptuos of us? Why is it that none of the arms of government in the country gives a damn about corruption and recklessness in our land? Why is it that every major corruption, fraud or open thievery case is always swept under the carpet and sometimes buried with bigger and grander scandal which in turn is also buried? Why is it that whenever a corruption case dominates the news media it disappears from both the airwaves and the newstands within a couple of days?" he queried.

He listed the menace of Boko-haram, the dangerous highway robberies, the traumatic kidnappings and militancy, the senseless tribal/religious scuffles and the avoidable electoral malpractices and ensuing violence as problems tearing the country apart.

The ASUU boss called on Nigerians to demand and insist on getting protection of life and property rights entrenched in the government, saying the menace of insecurity ought to have brought Nigerians on the streets demanding answers.

A legal Practitioner and rights activist, Femi Falana, who was the guest lecturer at the occasion, charged the ASUU to lead in the crusade to salvage the nation from total collapse.

The senior lawyer, in a lecture titled ''Nigeria's Crisis: Corruption, Impunity and Paradox of Development and Democracy'', bemoaned current level of corruption and the unseriousness of government to tackle it as well as selective judiciary interpretation, maintaining that ASUU has demonstrated through its last year strike that its members are in position to assist in putting Nigeria back in the right track.

"If you don’t do that this house which is falling, will collapse on all of us", he said.

In his welcome speech, University of Ibadan Chairman of the union, Professor Olusegun Ajiboye called on Nigerian scholars to research into fundamentalisms of thoughts, faiths and actions with a view to tackling growing crime and terrorism in Nigeria.