For united mass actions of Poly and Colleges of Education
students fighting for implementation of agreements reached by government with
ASUP and COEASU with University students resisting fee hike
We of the Education Rights Campaign (ERC) today join millions
of working people across the world to commemorate the anniversary of the June
16, 1976 massacre of students in Southwestern town, Soweto in South Africa. The
callous murder of protesting school students by the then South African
apartheid regime is a direct confirmation of the savage and cruel nature of the
prevailing capitalist system across the world in its brutal attacks against the
working people, students and youth.
This has found replication in Nigeria for instance through
the unwarranted attacks on protesting students of Lagos State University by the
Babatunde Fashola-led regime under the
auspices of the All Progressives’ Congress (APC), which claims to be the
alternative to the People’s Democratic Party. There was also brutal repression
of protesting students of Polytechnics and Colleges of Education demanding that
the demands of their striking lecturers be met in order for students to resume,
given the twelve month-old deadlocked strike.
Thirty-eight years after the Soweto massacre, the fate of the
Nigerian students and youth have not fared better under the barrage of
neo-liberal attacks on education and resulting mass unemployment. In a bid to
reverse the gains made through the strike action of the Academic Staff Union of
Universities (ASUU) last year, a fresh wave of fee hike is being implemented
across Nigerian universities. Starting from Obafemi Awolowo University, (OAU) Ile-Ife,
a university with the reputation of having relatively low fees, tuition fees
have been increased astronomically for both stale and fresh students. The wave
of fee hike is now blowing across University of Port-Harcourt and Tai Solarin
University of Education, Ijebu-ode in Ogun State alongside the University of
Lagos where students are being made to pay obnoxious amounts for late
registration.
The case of Lagos State University (LASU) only shows that
apart from the Federal Government, the state governments are only waiting to
take a cue from the effort of fee increment by the Lagos state government in
LASU before plunging the universities in their different states in the same
direction .It can be submitted therefore that a grave attack is looming on
education.
While struggles against the fee hikes have broken out across
the campuses, what is urgently needed is a coordinated national action to draw
together angry Poly and Colleges of Education students as well as students of
the universities willing to struggle against fee hikes on their campuses. In this
regard, the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) is failing
woefully as its leadership has remained handbags in the arms of different
sections of the ruling class.
As a starting point, a coordinated day of lecture boycott
across the Southwest to be called by the NANS Zone D should now on the agenda.
A Senate meeting of NANS Zone D needs to be convened as soon as possible to
draw up a comprehensive plan of action to unite the anti-fee hike protests with
the anger of Polytechnics and Colleges of Education Students yearning to
protest government’s endless refusal to meet the demands of their lecturers in
order for their campuses to be re-opened. Such a day of lecture boycott and
mass protests should be a step towards a comprehensive national mass
mobilization against education commercialization.
However, the central conclusion that needs to be drawn from
the foregoing is the overwhelming reality that all the ruling parties share the
same neo-liberal policies and only a genuine working people’s political
alternative can end the present socio-political logjam that the working masses have found
themselves.
Unfortunately, the central labour movement has refused and
neglected to pursue this magnificent task by abandoning the Labour Party, they
helped to create in the hands of careerist politicians. This is why the ERC
supports the initiative of the Socialist Party of Nigeria, which has recently
submitted its application to the Independent National Electoral Commission
(INEC). The ERC calls on genuine change-seeking students, workers and youth to
join the SPN in building a mass political alternative to the rotten ruling
parties.
HT Soweto
National Coordinator, ERC
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