On Tuesday June 24, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) began an indefinite strike to protest government's refusal to endorse a 2006 agreement which among other things would devote 26% of annual budgets to the education sector.

The accord also made provisions for a new salary structure which would have required a N78 billion budget. Government first denied the accord had been inked to make it operational. Today, Nigeria's public universities are grounded as the Non-Academic Staff Union and the Senior Staff Association of Universities have joined the strike.

It is regrettable that Nigeria would daily fritter its economic resources on frivolities and idly watch its tertiary institutions decay; it is equally disturbing that the timing of the strike is so close to the end of an already disjointed academic term. We do not believe that our academics and their unions should behave like rag-tag trade unions concerned only with the pecuniary benefits of the ivory tower alone. They are the veritable conscience of the society and its guiding light.

We have observed with dismay that ASUU has shed its benevolent toga of the past, when its members saw themselves as part of the larger society. In those days, it consciously and constantly engaged government and the larger society on issues of development, giving insights and solving puzzles, social, political, economic, etc, where and when necessary. These days, the story if different; ASUU only goes on strike to press home demands for salary increase usually glossing such demands over with a few debates about dilapidating social infrastructure.

Not only is the current ASUU's voice ominously silent on socio-economic and political issues, ASUU is not heard on the very obvious contradictions within the ivory tower itself, such as corruption and maladministration among university administrators. The kind of corruption that is stopping it from getting the infrastructural development it deserves.

The kind of corruption that forced the Education Trust Fund, ETF to go public with the amount of money in its kitty meant for development but unclaimed by university administrators because they could not account for the previous allocation. The kind of corruption that has manifested in intellectual laziness, when lecturers gather documents of dubious quality, self-publish and self-review, and put them in book form, all in a mad quest for promotion. We speak of the kind of corruption which has made promotion in the ivory tower the outcome of political patronage instead of the fruits of intellectual prowess and serious research. These are issues that should concern ASUU as much as its quest for salary increases. ASUU has lost touch with reality. Even their students, once their pillar of support, are beginning to question the union members' motive.

By using strikes at the slightest whim, these academics are unwittingly destroying the very social structure they claim to be fighting for. Education is too critical to be toyed the way it is now being done, and the fact that it is being so toyed with at the tertiary level makes the advancement of the Nigerian project all the more herculean. Academics should find that nexus between town and gown. This is why we call on the federal government and its agencies to find a lasting solution to this problem and return our universities to their pride of place, by making conditions conducive for them to groom the experts that Nigeria needs to develop. For the sake of the future of Nigeria, the authorities should do all that is neessary to shorten the agony of students and parents who always suffers as this unnecessary fight goes on. We also call on ASUU, NASU and others in the academic community to put the interest of the nation first when they make their demands.

We therefore hope that government would find a quick solution to the current impasse between it and the academicians and hope that as a gesture of relevance and for its own survival that ASUU, NASU and all the other unions currently on strike would find the logic in making itself thematically and practically relevant by addressing itself to the issues which affect the corporate existence of Nigeria and not only its own.