The National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to declare bandits kidnapping students in the Northern part of the country as terrorists.
NANS insisted that anyone with the propensity to kidnap and kill the students in large number should be declared a terrorist to any nation.
Speaking with journalists in Ado Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital, on Sunday, NANS president, Sunday Asefon, rued the lingering closure of schools in some parts of the North, espeially in Kaduna State, due to increasing wave of students’ abduction.
Asefon said the NANS’ had met with a frontline Islamic Cleric, Sheikh Ahmed Gumi on the worrisome situation , adding that the Islamic scholar had been mandated to tell the bandits when the opportunity avails to stay off public schools populated by children of the poor.
According to him, “The Government should beef up security in schools. It is our belief that students should be going to schools with the assurance that they will be secured.
“I have called the federal government that they should declare these bandits abducting students in the Northwest and North Central as terrorists, but the reverse has been the case.
“I had met with different stakeholders. I had been to Kaduna and several states in the North-West and North-Central to plead that they should provide security. Though, the security formations were trying their best, but their best has failed us. They need to be more proactive. We want our youths to have access to education. Most of the schools are under lock and key as we speak. What is future of this country?
“We met with Sheikh Ahmed Gumi to help us appeal to them to stay away from public schools that are populated by the children of the poor. They should just leave our students alone and let them pursue their future.”
The students body had also resolved its factional crisis, which sprang up recently with the emergence of one Abdumajid Oyeniyi splinter group, that was challenging the leadership of the National President, Sunday Asefon.
With this development, Oyeniyi said he has reunited with the main body and affirmed his loyalty to the Asefon-led national body in the interest of the over 41 million Nigeria students.
On the NANS’ factional crisis, Asefon, who was flanked by the former factional leader, Oyeniyi and other NANS chieftains, revealed that the truce was brokered by the Special Adviser to Governor Kayode Fayemi on Federal Matters, Mr Makinde Araoye.
