Link

************************************

DISCLAIMER:

This is a weak attempt at rewriting a TRUE life story as being felt in the deepest part of my heart. Any semblance to characters living, dead, re-incarnate or in limbo is a deliberate attempt. All blunders are mine, please bear with me, thanks in advance as you read, comment and share the post.

************************************
NANS DEATH

All around the world, universities are established to push forward the frontiers of knowledge, transform people’s lives and contribute to the health and wealth of a nation through their deep involvement in result oriented researches which is expected to have impact in the wider society and the economy. It is within this premise that I’ll like to address an issue that has been on my mind for some time now, the issue of STUDENT UNIONISM. I have been putting it off but it now calls for attention as another sets of invaluable comrades fell yesterday to the cruel hands of death while being involved in a ghastly road accident.

For those old enough to remember the military era, they will recollect the influential role student unions played in giving the military junta sleepless nights. How can one forget Olusegun Okeowo, late Chris Abashi and a host of others? Then “student unionism” was ideologically driven with detailed and intelligent analysis of the state of the nation, regular communique that are deep with insight and knowledge are released, not the shallow statements that we see from the stable of representatives of Nigerian students these days.

Student unionism in Nigeria has a cherished and glorious history that is worth re-enacting here. The emergence of West African Student Union (WASU) pioneered by some Nigerian students in London in 1925 opened the floodgate of student unionism in the country. WASU fought the colonial masters for the rights of Africans. This was followed by the National Union of Nigerian Students, (NUNS) whose last leader was Olusegun Okeowo. The NUNS was proscribed by the regime of General Olusegun Obasanjo. But with the advent of democratic rule, Nigerian students converged at the Yaba College of Technology, Lagos to establish NANS. NANS inherited the same idealism from WASU and NUNS and the student union matched on as a platform of change and of informed activism.

Has that same cherished tradition continued to date? We’ll find out.

For years now, successive leaderships of NANS have been completely right-wing, anti-struggle and pro-state. With the unrelenting capitalist neo-liberal attack on the right to education and years of betrayals by the NANS leadership, some activists are beginning to once again ask: is NANS dead?

The condition of the student movement is evidently not alright. For close to 20 years the student movement has lacked a vibrant and fighting national leadership with the ideological and political decay of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS). At the moment, the most crucial task for activists in the student movement is how to build a fighting and vibrant national student movement that can begin to challenge government’s neo-liberal capitalist policies of education underfunding and commercialisation and anti-poor program in general.

There can be no doubt that the desire to build a fighting national student movement is completely in order. With a fighting national student platform, it can be possible to unite Nigerian students in a common struggle against anti-poor education policies and mobilise them for joint action and solidarity with workers and other sections of the youths in the overall struggle against the capitalist neo-liberal agenda. However it is not just enough to desire something, it very crucial one also knows the best methods to fight for it. The rot in NANS is huge and phenomenal. NANS has completely lost its legitimacy and mass base as most students do not even know it exists anymore.

Things are quite different today. NANS senate meetings are hardly held and hence there is no avenue for intellectual debates. The conventions, which are now held in choice hotels instead of on campus, are theatres of war with different contestants heavily funded by parties and politicians arming cultists to gain victory. Furthermore, one notable feature which has been the norm in past conventions since student unionism started is continually being left out or partially treated, devoid of in-depth analysis, filled with lip service; the students movement do not discuss the “state of the nation”. As a disappointed delegate, the failure to discuss current issues is an evidence of the level of degeneration in NANS. This organisation used to be at the forefront of the struggle for the liberation of Nigeria’s downtrodden and oppressed classes.

I can still recall vividly, just like I mentioned earlier that NANS served as an active resistance group during the era of military regimes in Nigeria. It was part of the movement that fought for a return to civil rule in the country. By 1990, NANS was at the peak of its glory, having played a significant role in rousing Nigerians to protest the Structural Adjustment Program imposed by the Ibrahim Babangida regime at the urging of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In any case, the rot in NANS is not just the product of the successive right wing elements who have continuously occupied its leadership for years now. The enduring rot in NANS also has something to do with the ideological retreat in the student movement over the past 17 years which is a product of many factors including, but not restricted to, consistent attacks by the school management and government against student activists and students’ left organisations. All this has caused low level of consciousness among students, a condition which best suits and sustains the right wings in the local unions and NANS.

The same 1990 also marked the beginning of what would be a split within the organisation. After the controversial and heated convention of 1990,slated for Auchi Poly, but eventually held at UNIBEN, NANS witnessed a split along ethno-religious lines when a former undergraduate from Usman Dan Fodio University, Sokoto, announced a “Northern NANS”. This almost tore the union apart, but the students eventually came together after finding a common ground of agreement. However, that split fostered deeper ideological conflicts and schisms between different interest groups and weakened the broad platform of NANS; this unfortunately has continued to date. In my candid opinion, student unionism has been infiltrated [and is still being infiltrated] by dirty money politics as well as brigandage by members of some confraternities and cult groups.

In reality, these pathetic developments is not simply evidence of student leaders’ “degeneration” but a symptom of broader problems in the larger society. In 2005, the then NANS president Orkuma Hembe used the platform to campaign for Obasanjo’s third term gambit and even went further to award him “Defender of Democracy”. Perhaps he was too young, or does not have a sense of history to recollect that it was this same “defender of democracy” that proscribed NUNS and under whose administration some NUNS fighters were rusticated from their various Universities.

To try to understand the present crisis in NANS is to also understand that the larger Nigerian malaise is also affecting the association. If you think the principle of zoning of political office is a creation of the “Federal Character Commission” or the PDP, then you need to have a rethink. There is “zoning provision” in the constitution of NANS, and this does not permit anybody other than a student of an institution of higher learning according to the Constitution and Charter of Demand of NANS. The student body is actually zoned into four zones!

********************************
COMRADES DEATH

JUNE 13th, 2013
Five NANS Leaders Die In Auto Accident On Way To University of Uyo.

Donald Onukaoguu, the Senate President of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) and four other students have been killed in a ghastly road crash.
The students met their end yesterday on their way to the University of Uyo, Akwa-Ibom State, to intervene in the current crisis rocking that institution.
The lone survivor for the accident, who is currently receiving treatment at the Federal Medical Centre, Umuahia, claimed that an illegal road block mounted by the police was responsible for the tragedy.
It would be recalled that yesterday, the police killed several students during a protest organized by students of Engineering at the university of Uyo.  That prompted the decision of the NANS leaders to embark on the urgent trip to Akwa-Ibom.
The Engineering students were protesting against new transport fees and other anti-student policies, including the contentious “No pay, No examination” policy.
Confirming the death of his colleagues this morning, the President of NANS, Yinka Gbadebo, blamed the tragedy on the police. “The police under the current IGP killed nine students within one week; the police action is barbaric and we call for the immediate resignation of the IGP, Mohammed Dikko Abubakar. The Nigerian police have a poor reputation of extra-judicial killings. We are closing down all campuses in Nigeria and national action will commence immediately,” Mr. Gbadebo threatened.

However, it is yet unclear how the incident happened. The survivor of the crash claimed that the police mounted an illegal road block by putting heavy logs and stones on the road and that the unsuspecting students, who were travelling in a NANS bus rammed into the illegal barrier. According to him, the police ran away immediately the accident occurred.
Another source, has, however contradicted that account, claiming that a trailer crushed the students’ vehicle.

FEBRUARY, 2013

In a similar occurrence last February, nine students of the Nasarawa State University in Keffi, died in a road accident at Mararaba, Karu Local Government Area as they fled from soldiers who attacked them during a campus protest.
The soldiers also killed several students on the scene of the protest .

JULY 13, 2012

In July last year, the NANS National Vice President [External Affairs], Comrade Aremo Gbenga [IBILE] and three students’ union leaders were killed in another ghastly accident on the Owo–Akure Road. They were the Student Union Presidents of: [1] the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Comrade Awopegba Julius Oluwadapo [DPO], who was my immediate successor, a close friend of mine, a great mind, whom we belonged to the same ideological school of thought, a gentle, cool and calm fellow, come July 13th, 2013, I owe you, my dearest DPO a tribute!; [2] Comrade Akintola Abiodun of the Adeyemi College of Education, and [3] Comrade Oyikan Olotu of the Ondo State School of Midwifery, Akure.

My departed comrades, today you are no more, every moment the sad news of the death of comrades fell by the cruel hands of ghastly road accident breaks out, I feel gutted from within. The subsequent monumental burial that is usually accorded by affected state governments is more sickening but well worth it. The wailing of close associates and distant colleagues as the body of the deceased is being escorted from one point to the other by mammoth crowd of students as tears breaks out and could not hold is usually a memorable sober, the drive in convoy escorted with buses from neighbouring institution to see you home is always nostalgic. And everytime I pray never to see off a young comrade to the land beyond but it keeps occurring!

Our Beginning,

It was usually at one senate meeting or the other. Sometimes it was usually at the battlefield of the NANS election or at the battlefield of one struggle or the other.

Our struggles,

It was usually for the uplift of the welfare of the Nigerian students. Irrespective of how DEAD NANS appears or operates presently, from time immemorial, we have always had the STRONG, the WEAK, and the TRAITORS within our rank and file. Irrespective of how backward NANS has deviated, lots of progressive comrades, maybe very few, has been giving their lives to sustain the students movement, from those that I know not of and those that I know, may the spirits of all Nigerian students reward you all for your genuine and immense sacrifice and invaluable contribution to the continued existence of NANS.

From the Late Moses Oisakede,[NANS President 1998/1999], and those that have gone before him to the most recent, Donald Onukaoguu,[Senate President,NANS 2012/2013], and to those that will still fall before we achieve our sole aim, of victory for all Nigerian students, may the GOD’s continue to preserve and protect the ideals you fought and died for.
My dear fallen comrades, I write you today that I shall never forget your good for humanity and most especially myself, at any given opportunity in life again, I shall remember you. Dear fallen comrades, it is not over until it is over, there we are and the struggle continues.

Adiue my colleagues, those we started the struggle with have joined “them” and we are still watching the day we shall triumph over “them”. May the soul of all deceased comrades continue to rest in perfect peace. AMEN

************************************
CONCLUSION:

In writing I share,not to boast but that the world through my own little way, may become a better place.
Your opinions count, please do share!

GOD bless NIGERIA!!!
GOD bless NANS!!!
GOD bless all NIGERIAN STUDENTS!!!
ALUTA CONTINUA; VICTORIA ASCERTA!

Thank you for your rapt attention.
Com. Salami Ismail Oyewale [SAMA]
Former President
FUTA Students’ Union
2011/2012

SamaOnPoint’sBlog…..always ONpoint