You save your salary to earn a promotion. No book grant, you buy books for yourself with your salary. Nigerian public University lecturers are perhaps the only workers that use their salary to work to achieve the criteria set for their promotion.

I told him that if he should join the academics now, it will take him the next 12 years at least, to become a Senior Lecturer to earn the salary of a starter in his present organisation. And that since FG thinks the lecturers deserve no pay rise, it will take him the next 15 years of serious academic and research output to earn his present salary in his present organisation. Meanwhile, he will have to fund all that with his salary for that 15 years.

I asked if he still want to be a lecturer and he was mute. He was like this is bad and not fair. Then I said, when you see us in class teaching with all smiles and doing our best, it is not because we have a good salary and working conditions, but because we love the job and try to manage the little we are receiving to get the job done.

This is the life of the academic that you do not know. Their life may look glittering but it is not gold.

The poor welfare and work environment are telling on the quality of the output from the university. Some lecturers, especially the younger ones, are already getting pissed off and leaving or planning to leave. So, how long can we sustain this? Everyone keeps saying every lecturer should have a side hustle and stop complaining. That will be the worst thing to happen to Nigerian universities. Some of our colleagues with side hustle just come to teach and leave to manage their side hustle. You can ask the students about the impact of such a lecturer on them. You don't want to have a university where lecturers just come to teach and leave for their side hustle. A university is not designed that way.

President Buhari, Adamu Adamu, and Nasiru El-Rufai in 2013/2014 gave a detailed explanation of the several reasons why ASUU is always declaring strike actions. Adamu Adamu's articles on why ASUU is always on strike were something else. As a matter of fact, I have never seen a comprehensive article like El-Rufai's write-up in October 2013 that he titled: For those who do not understand "why ASUU is on strike". Go back and read their words and listen to their videos and stop behaving like you need a thinking cap.

ASUU fight is for the survival of the system where you want your child to come for a degree program. We have helped the state governors to destroy public primary and secondary education. You have a choice to take side with the FG towards the destruction of the remnant of the education system or join the fight to save the system. The choice is all yours.

God bless you. I've always thought about taking lecturing job after completing my formal education, but when a lecturer explained what they pass through in the profession something similar to this, l took my mind off lecturing job