Strike Ongoing

Long Strike, No End?

President Buhari has ordered his staff to talk to the unions about their strike, seeking to end it. They have been on strike for over five months! This is too much for the parents and others to bear.

Apparently the private universities are operating now. But the public universities are not. So what do the public universities do? Of course! They go to teach in the private universities!

As of Tuesday, the President ordered his Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, to intervene and come to a conclusion within one week. He has ordered several other people to be present. Senator Ngige, a past negotiator, has received praise and should be there. He also ordered other people to be present.

But the parents are not completely satisfied with this outcome. They say the President has already asked for this to be settled. But no progress has been made.

There are four unions: a union of academic staff people, another for non-academic staff, and two more for other people associated with the universities. One of their demands is for a different system of paying their salaries and other costs. For the academic staff, the union organizers say they do not want an Integrated Payroll and Personnel information system. Instead, they are asking for adoption of  University, Transparency and Accountability Solution for the academic staff. For the non-academic staff, there should also be another system.

I wonder whether the President’s statements carry any weight today.

Nigeria Labour (sp) Congress is also eager for an end. Nevertheless the banking and aviation systems say they will also hold a strike against the government for its consistent lack of support. It seems like the strike will not end soon!

James Baldwin Redux

In his work Nobody Knows My Name, James Baldwin, an African-American, gives an account of the Paris 1956 Conference of Negro-African Writers and Artists. Wow! 1956! He talked about the eight Black (sp) men who are on the stage at the beginning of the conference.

Alioune Diop was the first to speak. He described the question facing the conferees:

“It was not a question, on the one hand, of simply being swallowed up, of disappearing in the maw of Western culture, nor was it, on the other hand, a question of rejecting assimilation in order to be isolated within African culture. Neither was it a question of deciding which African values were to be retained and which European values were to be adopted. Life was not that simple.”

Instead he spoke of the need for a definition and a sense of responsibility. He says the conference should now accept an on-going dialogue with Europe.

After he finished, a message from a well-wisher, W. E. B. Du Bois, an American, was read. He began by saying the U.S. government did not give him a passport. Therefore he was unable to be present. For this, he received lots of applause.

But his argument was ill-considered. The five Black men from the U.S. were in the audience. James Baldwin says these comments took away the important comments from the Black men. But they were in fact the true face of the Black people in America. They could not now be regarded as seriously. However, they were, he says, more able, if not for W. E. B. Du Bois’ way with words. He hopes they will still hold on to their convictions as the reason why American Blacks were considered a resource for the conference.

In the afternoon Mr. Lasebikan from Nigeria spoke about the Yoruba (sp) poetry. He said that the Yoruba language had only been transcribed during the last (19th) century. Yet he hoped that in this time a great awakening of past centuries of grandeur might arise.

In the meantime, he spoke in Yoruba and then in English, lending his words a style of their own. He gave the poems a meaning devoted to their subjects. One was a devotional, another one on the pounding of yams! Certainly I felt at home among these subjects.

He told of other speakers, including Leopold Senghor, who spoke of the differing ways Europe and Africa have in their interpretation of art. In his description, art for art’s sake, does not exist among Africans. He described art as a way of life rather than an interpretation of life.

Baldwin went on to describe the others in the conference. But I’ve given you the most important points of the four days. The last day was taken up by devising an inventory of the conference, which didn’t finish until nearly closing time at 6:55 pm!