The Education Rights Campaign (ERC) totally condemns the
Yinka Gbadebo-led leadership of the National Association of Nigerian Students
(NANS) for the award of Grand Commander of Nigerian Students to President
Goodluck Jonathan.
This award is an embarrassment to the community of students
and youth in Nigeria. The best response to this national shame is for students
and activists on all campuses to rise up to reclaim the NANS from racketeers
and careerists like Yinka Gbadebo and his gang. A return of NANS to the
democratic and mass platform it used to be and with a leadership that is
sufficiently bold enough to defend student interests is vital if the ongoing
onslaught on public education in forms of fee hike and commercialisation is to
be resisted.
Fearful of the widespread unpopularity of his pro-capitalist
and viciously anti-poor government which has failed Nigerians in all
ramifications, Jonathan and his handlers hope to use this award to rehabilitate
his battered image in the run-up to the 2015 general elections. Like a drowning
person, Jonathan is prepared to hang onto any straw. This is why despite the lack
of credibility of NANS which most Nigerians derisively see as an association of
non-students and unemployed youths, Jonathan is not in the least embarrassed to
be identified with it. As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together.
This award may have been conferred in the name of Nigerian
students. Certainly, it enjoys no endorsement and support of Nigerian students
and youths. In 1988 when the students of Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife
were to confer on late Chief Gani Fawehinmi the award of Senior Advocate of the
Masses (SAM), not only was the award ratified by the union parliament, Chief
Gani Fawehinmi was invited to the campus where he received the award in the
presence of thousands of students and the media. If the organisers of this
national charade were confident of themselves, instead of taking the award to
Aso Rock they should have invited President Jonathan to any campus of their
choosing to receive the award.
In any case, this award will further strengthen the belief
in many quarters that those who claim to be leaders of NANS are mostly
non-students who are using the association to line their own pockets. Otherwise
how could a genuine student, who is studying under inhumane academic environment
as exists on all campuses across the country or who is faced with the prospect
of losing their studentship as a result of outrageous fees, support President
Jonathan or wish to have him continue in office beyond 2015?
Definitely, this award will anger millions of Nigerian
Students and youths. This is not surprising. President Jonathan's government
has been a failure in all ramifications. Its failure in the area of public
education is embarrassing. From 7.3 million few years ago, the number of out-of-school
children has increased to 10.3 million under President Jonathan's watch. If the
situation in the North East is factored in, certainly the number of
out-of-school children could be well above 12 million. Public Universities,
Polytechnics and Colleges of Education were if taken together, closed for more
than two years as a result of strikes caused by the government refusal to meet
genuine demands of education workers. Despite the success of the ASUU strike in
particular in forcing a marginal commitment to release N200 billion to fund
public tertiary institutions, the government has responded with steep increases
in fees. Students at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) whose fees have been
jerked up would definitely not support an award purportedly presenting Goodluck
Jonathan as a student-friendly President.
However this award is coming on the heels of a similar
fraudulent award of Senior Advocate of Nigerian Students conferred on Governor
Fashola of Lagos State by the Sunday Asefon-led Southwest (Zone D) leadership
of NANS. Just like President Jonathan, Fashola and the APC badly needed an
image laundering after the bitter defeat students and workers of the Lagos
State University (LASU) gave them in the victorious struggle for reversal of
hiked fees. For all its shallow radical posturing, the NANS Zone leadership is
not so much different from the National Leadership of NANS. Both are simply two
sides of a bad coin. While the NANS President Yinka Gbadebo and his team of
racketeers represent the pro-People's Democratic Party (PDP) wing of NANS, the
Asefon-led Zone D leadership is the pro-All Progressive Congress (APC) wing.
What unites the two wings however is readiness to sell out students to the
highest bidder.
The ERC considers both awards as a gross misrepresentation
of Nigerian students who are burdened by skyrocketting tuition fees, a broken
public education system and an uncertain future all which are direct results of
the pro-market capitalist policies favoured by the governments of both President
Jonathan and Governor Fashola.
As election approaches, the two main capitalist parties in
Nigeria - PDP and APC - are falling over themselves in a competition to use
education as a ruse to hoodwink the people again. But in reality, neither the
PDP nor APC deserves the votes of students, youth and workers. Nigeria under
the rule of either of these political parties will continue to retrogress,
public education will continue to be underfunded and commercialised while
majority of the people will continue to wallow in abject poverty in the midst
inexhaustible wealth.
There is urgent need for the emergence of a mass working
peoples' political alternative that can fight for socialist change. If a
genuine political party that represents the 99% should exist today and is able
to aggregate and give political expression to the palpable anger of students,
youth and workers who are yearning for change, both the PDP and APC can be
easily swept away in a deluge of mass uprising. It is to this end that the ERC
supports the formation of the Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN) and plays active
role in building it as a credible and formidable platform. .
Hassan Taiwo Soweto
National Coordinator
07033697259
Michael Ogundele
National Secretary
Goodluck Jonathan Awarded With Honour by NANS
Reviewed by Sharemez
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Reviewed by Sharemez
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