Opinion:
Comrade Chris Piwuna: ASUU’s New Helmsman
Jeff Godwin Doki Ph.D
Christopher Goson Piwuna is a Professor of Psychiatry with the University of Jos, Nigeria. On May 12,2025, he was elected as the new President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) during the 23rd National Delegate’s Conference held at the University of Benin, Benin city. Christopher Piwuna’s emergence as the President of ASUU is perceived by many analysts as historic and phenomenal in at least two ways among others. First, it is the very first time the minority tribes in Nigeria have produced an ASUU President. Second, he is the first ASUU President with a medical background. But over and above all, Piwuna seems to have possessed a good plentiful store of experience in ASUU principles, ASUU struggles, and ,of course, ASUU’s ideology. He served as Financial Secretary of the union at the University of Jos branch in 2013. He became chairperson of ASUU University of Jos Branch in 2015. He rose to the rank of National internal Auditor of the union in 2018. He was elected ASUU vice president in 2021, a position he held until his election as ASUU President on May 12 2025. So, what manner of man is Comrade Chris Piwuna?
Chris Piwuna is a man of many distinguished parts. He is an intellectual worker, an activist and a social mobilizer. He is a detribalized Nigerian and has always been involved in ASUU struggles and has always tried to shape the union’s democratic direction. He is also involved in university administration and he is the current Dean of Student Affairs at the University of Jos. While he served as chairperson of ASUU University of Jos branch, Piwuna had insisted that unionism knows neither tribe nor ethnicity. Proof of this is that he fought tirelessly for the welfare of other sister unions in the university system like SSANU, NASU and NAAT. But in whatever role he had played, Piwuna has always advanced humanity through his principles, courage, uprightness and simple humility. Piwuna relates with all colleagues like comrades of equal status. He is quite cheerful and will always exude a kind of subdued humor with his trade mark, shy smile. Perhaps, it will be no exaggeration to state that it is Piwuna’s simple humility that has made him to tower so high today as evidenced in the overwhelming number of votes he got from delegates across the country. But he is also a passionate lover of life and laughter.
The new ASUU President is a fearless and bold activist who is also courageous and controversial not just for the sake of being so or to gain cheap popularity. No! Chris Piwuna is someone who talks frankly and take actions based upon his deep convictions. He is a courageous man who does not hide his position on crucial issues. He has spent great energy and time exhorting the academic community to be upright and brave while at the same time castigating the Nigerian leadership for its total neglect of the education sector and its obsessive corruption which has made a nation, so abundantly endowed, to be wallowing in poverty.
In his acceptance speech, the new ASUU leader, in his usual detribalized manner, identified one of the problems that has kept the Nigerian nation traveling on reverse gear—-disunity. The famed African literary genius Chinua Achebe had captured this reality, many years ago, in his book The Trouble With Nigeria(1983):
Nothing in Nigeria’s political history captures her problem of
national integration more graphically than the chequered fortune of
the word tribe in her vocabulary. Tribe has been accepted at one time as
a friend, rejected as an enemy at another, and finally smuggled in through
the back door as an accomplice…..In Nigeria, in spite our protestations, there
is plenty of work for tribe.
Piwuna comes across as a man with an unquenchable commitment to fight for justice, freedom and human rights. But he will always insist that this kind of commitment can only be realized if all Nigerians join hands together irrespective of their ethnic and religious differences. In speech after speech, the new President has shown a distaste for tribal sentiments and the whole idea of ‘ours and theirs’ syndrome which has always been an obstacle to the development of nationhood in Nigeria. So, how do we solve the problem of national integration?
In his acceptance speech also, the new comrade President declared boldly that ASUU, as a union, transcends tribal, ethnic and parochial interests. He also called on all ASUU members to be united. But more than that, Piwuna believes in unity and a synergy between both teaching and non-teaching staff in the university system The new comrade President believes that ASUU is a union that fits the honest, anti-imperialist intellectual who is armed and prepared to fight, in a certain measure, for the elimination of injustice and the mass participation of the people in the ordering of public affairs. This, he insists, can be achieved only when all unions on campus work for the actualization of the same goals and aspirations.
The obvious implication is that the new comrade President is an advocate of a free society where all citizens will be given priority, where Nigeria as a country will come first, where all citizens will work together sharing in their joys and griefs, their sorrows and ecstasies. The new comrade President has in mind a new Nigeria where all citizens will insist that education is a right and not a privilege; a new Nigeria where all citizens will have faith in the capacity of the people to change their lives, to demonstrate that people are subjects and not just passive objects of development, to insist on certain minimum professional ethics and democratic principles, to reject a society based on corruption, to reject the rule of fear, to reveal that the children of ordinary peasants and workers have a right to free education, to insist that it is the primary responsibility of any responsible government to provide education for all its citizens. But over and above all, the new President would want all Nigerians to unite in order to criticize the policy of privatization of education and the whole program of looting and plundering of our commonwealth. It could be perceived that Piwuna’s ideas smack of a pan-Nigerian outlook.
Finally, one can say with considerable justification that the new ASUU President has some noble ideals just like some other great Nigerian citizens before him. And this brings us to the question whether his ideals would be aspirational or realistic? Would his ASUU colleagues and Nigerian citizens be willing to stand for and speak the truth? The new comrade President has promised, in his acceptance speech, that he is very willing to tear down the veils behind which the truth is hidden. It is common knowledge that one of the cardinal principles of ASUU is to seek, to find and to tell the truth at all times even at great hazard. It is left to be said that the entire nation is waiting to see the new President engage the Nigerian leadership on issues of education and public affairs. It is also expected that Comrade Chris Piwuna will consolidate on the gains and achievements of his predecessors especially by demonstrating that ASUU is a great human exemplar. It is also hoped that comrade Chris Piwuna will stand for the truth just like he promised, and shall remain firm, bold, resolute and consistent. Only these attributes may help him to realize his dream of a truly united Nigeria as exemplified in ASUU, the union he has recently been saddled with the responsibility of steering its ship. I wish the new comrade President well and happy.
**Jeff Godwin Doki is a Professor of Comparative Literature with the University of Jos.
