{"id":385,"date":"2022-05-22T07:48:21","date_gmt":"2022-05-22T07:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/citywatch.ng\/agf-ahmed-idris-blasphemy-against-asuu-and-nigeria-tribune-online\/"},"modified":"2022-05-22T07:48:21","modified_gmt":"2022-05-22T07:48:21","slug":"agf-ahmed-idris-blasphemy-against-asuu-and-nigeria-tribune-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citywatch.ng\/agf-ahmed-idris-blasphemy-against-asuu-and-nigeria-tribune-online\/","title":{"rendered":"AGF Ahmed Idris' \u201cBlasphemy\u201d against ASUU and Nigeria – Tribune Online"},"content":{"rendered":"
\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\tTribune Online – Breaking News in Nigeria Today<\/span> \t\t\t\t<\/a> Professor Lawan Abubakar, who coordinates the Bauchi Zone of ASUU, issued a statement on behalf of ASUU last year in which he called attention to Idris\u2019 unexplained wealth and grasping acquisitiveness. \t\t\t\t\tThis website uses cookies to improve your experience. We’ll assume you’re ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. \t\t\t\t\tAccept<\/a> \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRead More<\/a> \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
I am intentionally appropriating, and extending the semantic boundaries of, the term \u201cblasphemy\u201d for this piece because it seems to be the only term that inflames enough passions to get Nigerians to talk, listen, or act.
Alhaji Ahmed Idris, the suspended Accountant General of the Federation, has \u201cblasphemed\u201d the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Nigeria, and even decency with his alleged stratospheric pillaging of the nation\u2019s resources. One of the consequences of his theft is the closure of our public universities.
He should be \u201cbeaten,\u201d \u201cstoned,\u201d and \u201cburned\u201d with speedy prosecutorial vengeance to avenge his blasphemy.
If blasphemy is \u201cthe act of depriving something of its sacred character,\u201d Idris has more than stripped our public universities of their \u201csacredness\u201d by being partly responsible for the ongoing strike by ASUU that has put the futures of our youths on hold.
Idris was arrested last Sunday by officers of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for stealing at least 80 billion naira. The Punch of May 19 also reported the EFCC as saying that Idris used proxies to obtain prime properties \u201clocated in Kano, Lagos, Abuja, Dubai and London\u201d at the expense of Nigeria.
While it\u2019s heartening that the EFCC has finally arrested and detained him for the staggeringly monumental fraud he\u2019s been accused of perpetrating for years, it was ASUU that first called attention to the questionable source of his wealth when no one cared.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would want gentlemen of the Press to assist us in the conduct of two investigations,\u201d he said. \u201cThe first is to uncover who bought the version of the Sokoto Hotel in Kano with a whopping sum of N500 million cash down and demolished it the next day for an on-going development of a multi-billion-naira shopping mall.
\u201cHow and where did he get money for such investment? The second assignment is to assist uncover who is hiding to invest multi-billion naira in the Gezawa Commodity Market and Exchange. How and where did he get money for such investment?\u201d
It turns out that Idris actually got the bulk of his ill-gotten wealth on the back of the despair and agony of university lecturers. He blatantly stole lecturers\u2019 salaries through the fraudulent Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), which ironically bills itself as a safeguard against fraud.
Idris made N16,000 for every university lecturer who enrolled in IPPIS. The IPPIS also indiscriminately and inexplicably deducted thousands of naira from the salaries and allowances of lecturers every month. Just days after his arrest, many friends told me, they started getting bank alerts notifying them of the payment of backlogs of unpaid allowances\u2014 and perhaps from the reversal of illegal deductions.
So, the IPPIS is basically designed as a conduit to siphon the legitimate earnings of university teachers and other public sector employees, and Idris milked it for what it was worth. How can one person be that monumentally avaricious and unfeeling? How can one person visit so much anguish on so many people for so long without consequences\u2014until now?
Freedom from the torment of the IPPIS is one of the reasons ASUU is on strike\u2014and why our children are mindlessly vegetating at home and wriggling in emotional pain. That\u2019s secular blasphemy (if you would forgive the counterintuitive terminological paradox) worthy of the toughest \u201cred lines\u201d\u2014 if we care about the future of Nigeria.
Since late 2019, ASUU has come up with an alternative to the money-stealing IPPIS, which it called the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS). It has tweaked it several times in response to concerns from the government.
But the DG of the National Information Technology and Development Agency (NITDA) by the name of KashifuInuwa, who is a servile flunkey to Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami (who is still smarting from ASUU\u2019s endorsement of my exposure of his FUTO professorial fraud), claimed that UTAS had failed NITDA\u2019s three \u201cintegrity tests.\u201d
You have to be cognitively stunted to not realize that Pantami, who is sulking over national ASUU\u2019s categorical denunciation of his professorial fraud at FUTO, is using his handpicked underling at NITDA to get at the union by disparaging UTAS.
Although NITDA itself grudgingly adjudged UTAS as more than 80 percent technically compliant, it nonetheless mysteriously characterized it as having failed its \u201cintegrity tests.\u201d
As ASUU president Emmanuel Osodeke said in the aftermath of NITDA\u2019s predetermined verdict, \u201cThe report by the NITDA showed that UTAS scored more than 80 per cent on technical assessment and more than 85 per cent on end-user assessment. Can we say that 80 percent and 85 percent are failures?\u201d
Now that it has come to the open that the IPPIS is one of the ducts through which the Accountant General of the Federation drains off the salaries and allowances of university lecturers and other public sector workers, it would be interesting to know IPPIS\u2019s score in NITDA\u2019s \u201cintegrity tests.\u201d
You see, I used to be fiercely critical of ASUU and its interminable strikes, but villainous frauds like Ahmed Idris and brash, dishonest, and conscienceless charlatans like Pantami and his NITDA minions have compelled me to have a change of mind.
ASUU isn\u2019t on strike because it loves strikes or because it delights in punishing students. As I pointed out in a previous column, most ASUU members are also affected by the strike because most of them are not rich enough to send their children to private universities in Nigeria or in foreign countries.
It isn\u2019t just that their take-home pay can\u2019t take them home (apologies to the Professor Attahiru Jega-led ASUU of the early 1990s), the accountant general of the federation and his cronies also use IPPIS to steal from their monthly earnings.
What do you want them to do to call attention to their agony? Go on demonstrations? Well, the demonstrations will be infiltrated, hijacked, made violent, which will provide grounds for the labelling of ASUU as a terrorist organization that would then be proscribed.
Lobby members of the National Assembly? Well, they already do that with no results. First, you can\u2019t successfully lobby Nigeria\u2019s National Assembly members without oil to grease many palms.
Second, even on the off chance that they are able to get enough oil to grease enough palms (which would be an ethical and moral violation), they still have to deal with the executive who can, and who do, ignore legislation that they don\u2019t like.
How about lobbying traditional rulers, captains of industry, and opinion leaders? They\u2019ve been doing that since I was an undergraduate in the 1990s. It doesn\u2019t produce any effect.
There is no alternative to strike that ASUU has not contemplated or implemented
Only the spectacle and agony of strikes get governments to give them whatever concessions they have received from military regimes to now. Sadly, students and parents also bear the brunt of this strategy. But governments are entirely responsible for it.
As Sahara Reporters publisher Omoyele Sowore, said in a May 19 social media update, \u201cTwo Nigerian officials arrested for stealing N127 billion: \u20a680b + \u20a6 47b = \u20a6127 billion. To #ENDASUUStrike we need to deposit \u20a6200 billion. If one more Nigerian crook is arrested, money to pay off ASUU is complete!\u201d
It\u2019s hilarious but true. If just a few people can easily steal what thousands of lecturers are asking for to legitimately survive and get our universities to run minimally, you cannot blame ASUU for always being on strike.
Finally, I wish someone would indoctrinate Nigerians to be as angry, touchy, intolerant, and pushed to draw \u201cred lines\u201d over injustice, misgovernance, elite cruelty, etc. as some people in the Muslim North are over \u201cblasphemy.\u201d Leaders would always be on their game, on their guard, and on their best behavior. And Nigeria would be one of the best places to live on earth.
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