How ASUU Strike Affects Business at Gombe State University

How ASUU Strike Affects Business at Gombe State University

AREWA AGENDA – Life hits university business owners hard as a result of the five-month old Academic Staff Union of Universities’ (ASUU) strike.

As we rally around Gombe State University, shops are locked, businesses are closed, and grass has taken over even the busiest business centers.

Some of the business owners have expressed worries over the seemingly unending strike, which is causing damage to their goods and putting them in hard and miserable living conditions. Sani Abubakar, who has a provision shop, lamented that his goods have now expired. “Yes.” All the goods in the provision have expired; they were goods like biscuits and drinks. We did not expect the strike to last long. We had already purchased goods before the strike. You know, provisional goods usually expire. Most of them have expired. We just count the loss,” he lamented.

Despite the long strike, some business owners continue to open their shops in the hopes of being patronized by the remaining university community or outside customers. But despite their best efforts, they sometimes go days without making any money. A typist, Usman Aminu, shared his pains, saying: “Actually, the business has gone down, unlike before. Sometimes you have a customer from outside the university who will come or phone you. If you are not around, you will miss the opportunity. This is why we open sometimes. But we did not get work all the time. In fact, sometimes we go three to four days without doing any work”.

Also, a POS service provider, Sha’atu Adamu, said that: “Things are not easy.” We spent a whole day without services, but before the strike, we got a lot of work”

As a result of poor patronage, some of the business owners take their goods outside the university, while others entirely move their businesses outside the university. A food seller, Zuwaira (Tala), said that “There are no buyers now in the school. We do not make sales. We now take our food to Pantami. But we used to make sales a lot. Auwal Adamu Galaxy, a typist who moved outside the university to Bolari, near NYSC office, said that the reason for his relocation was that: “We thought the strike would not last long; maybe just a few days. But things were different. Five months now and this is the only business we rely on.”

Galaxy also advised people who do business in universities to either look for another job or move out of them as life becomes hard and it will never accept their conditions. “I advise anyone doing business in Nigerian universities to either move outside or find another job, because the condition of our country is not favorable to our business”

Some of the affected people have called on the government to end the strike, saying that some of them are family men and they have just been counting losses for five months.

ASUU has been on strike since February 2022, but the federal government has yet to take any meaningful steps to end it.