Gathering Shows Potential to Rebuild the Students’
Movement
By
Michael Ogundele and Dimeji Macaulay
On Monday
21st September, 2015 the Centre for Popular Education (CEPED),
a platform of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and Amilcar Cabral
Ideological School (ACIS) jointly organized a students’ retreat to mark the 10th year
anniversary of the death of Chima Ubani. Late Chima Ubani was a 1986 Students’
Union president of University of Nigeria, Nsukka who played prominent roles in
the student movement under the auspices of National Association of Nigerian
Students, (NANS), and was the Inaugural Secretary of the Joint Action
Front (JAF). He, alongside photo journalist
Tunji Oyeleru, died in an auto-crash on September 21 2005 on their way from
Maiduguri where he had participated in a sensitization rally organized by the labour
movement and civil society organizations to resist yet another plan to increase
the cost of petroleum products.
In
all, about 15 students’ union leaders, some NANS officials and students
across the higher institutions participated in the retreat which had about 250
people in attendance. Notably, there were only two unions from the southern
part of the country. Most of the unions in attendance came from the northern
part.
The
retreat commenced at about 12:15pm with the introduction of the invited guests.
These include Dr. Sola Olorunyomi (Convener, ASUU Students and Trade Unions
relations committee), Dr. Mahmud Lawan (ASUU Chairman, BUK) who also stood for
the ASUU president, Owei Lakemfa, Lanre Arogundade (DSM NEC member), Hauwa
Mustapha (a representative of the NLC), Prof. Funke Sulaimon (member, ASUU
Students and Trade Unions relations committee) Gbenga Komolafe, and the NANS Senate
president who represented the NANS president among others.
In her
opening remarks, the ACIS Central coordinator, Abiola Dabiri, emphatically
stressed that the primary aim of the students’ retreat is to
cross- fertilize ideas and share experiences towards rebuilding the
students’ movement, and to immortalize Chima Ubani.
Dr.
Mahmud Lawan, chairman of the Bayero University Kano ASUU chapter, in his
keynote address which he gave on behalf of the ASUU president said that the
retreat was historic, unique and significant because it was in the same
university, BUK, about 33 years ago (specifically 1982) that Nigerian students
gathered to adopt a CHARTER OF DEMANDS in the struggle against neo- liberal
education policies and in defense of the Nigeria people at large. He also added
that the retreat, too, is unique in the sense that it is being used to
commemorate the memory and remembrance of Chima Ubani. In the words of the
BUK Chairman: “the retreat which was organized under CEPED platform
of ASUU was to bring together Nigerian students in the struggle for
the emancipation of Nigeria people and in the campaign against the poor state
of Nigerian universities”. He as well challenged students to actually start
monitoring the special intervention funds released to their various
universities as a result of the ASUU strike of 2013. He further stressed that
ASUU struggles over the years is specifically in the interest of Nigerian
students so as to have a good, qualitative university education.
Lanre
Arogundade, a 1984 NANS president and member of the National Executive
Committee (NEC) of the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) was one of the two
lead speakers. He started his presentation by stating that the students’
retreat offered another unique opportunity to deepen previous debates on the
question of rebuilding the students' movement. He therefore had no choice but
to speak on “The continuing quest to rebuild NANS and the students’movement” fully conscious though that the debate in itself cannot be exhausted
on one occasion. He thereafter hoped that there would be some positive
aftermaths of the retreat that would manifest in ideologically and politically
strengthened students’ unions and a new NANS that will genuinely
fight for students’ interests, that of workers’ unions on campuses and the
working masses in the larger society.
In the
25-minute speech, Comrade Lanre also x-rayed the history and the political
reason for the radicalization that characterized the broad
students’ movement in the early 80s stating that there was an ideological
basis; hence the core of the revolutionary inclined students’ activists were,
like their predecessors in
the post-colonial era, either leftists,
Pan Africanists or nationalists. It was therefore not accidental that
they operated a very radical and fighting NANS on a political platform,
Patriotic Youth Movement of Nigeria (PYFMN) that encapsulated Marxist
socialist, Black Nationalist and Pan Africanist students’ groups- one of which
was Alliance of Progressive Students (ALPS) to which he belonged at the
University of Ife. He mentioned few out of the numerous tumultuous
struggles waged by NANS under his leadership including the declaration of
eleven (11) days nation-wide mass lecture boycott against the intention of the
Buhari-Idiagbon military regime to commercialize education through increase in
tuition fees. Chima Ubani who the students’ retreat was organized to
honour was one of the chief mobilization officers for that struggle.
He also
added that beyond the nation-wide boycott of classes, NANS under his leadership
intervened in many other struggles within and outside campuses including
support for striking pilots and medical doctors operating under the umbrella of
NARD and NMA. For him “it was a period of endless night journeys and day time
rallies and meetings”. All said, he explained that the students’ movement
in the current days is an entirely different stock that reflects the
ideological and political decline in the mass movements, particularly the
central labour organizations and trade unions. One of the long term effects is
that NANS is now an association funded by the political class to hold meetings
and conventions at Eagle Square in Abuja and sometimes in expensive hotels.
This, he concluded, has weakened the ability of Nigerian students to fight
against capitalist neo-liberal policies of education commercialization and
privatization of the commanding heights of the economy as well as attacks on
vibrant and independent students’ unionism across campuses as occasioned by the
dismantling of the rights to independent students’ unionism.
Lanre Arogundade, former NANS President and DSM NEC member |
He stressed that Nigerian students
have a role to play in the quest to rebuild the broad students’ movement, in
the struggle to end oppression and replace the rule of the few rich minority
with that of the majority poor. He as well emphasized that one way to do this
is to begin to organize from below to reclaim local students’ unions and strong
political relationship between the labour and trade union leaders and the
students’ union leaders.
Delivering
his speech on the NANS Academic Reform Campaign (ACAREF) Gbenga Komolafe stated
clearly that the fundamentals of the ACAREF are right to access, right to free
education at all levels and democratization of the tertiary institutions. He
further charged student participants to take up the responsibility of
monitoring the released special intervention fund and a review of the NANS
Charter of Demands to encapsulate the recent crises in the education sector.
In a
solidarity message, the Vice president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) said
that the NLC will as well be happy to host Nigerian students in a similar
student retreat as a contribution to the campaign to rebuild the students’
movement.
On behalf
of the Education Rights Campaign, (ERC), Comrade Michael appreciated the joint
initiative of the CEPED and ACIS in organizing the program. He too
reiterated the need to rebuild the students' movement from below because
the ERC shares no illusion in a top- bottom approach. According to him, the students'
movement should adopt a fighting program in alliance with other oppressed
strata of the society as articulated in special ERC leaflet being circulated at
the retreat.
Dipo Fashina, former ASUU President |
Former
ASUU President, Dr. Dipo Fashina, while submitting that the task to rebuild the
students’ movement is complex agreed that there was an urgent need to re-forge
an integrated relationship between ASUU and NANS as “we cannot have a
non-ideological NANS”. He also explained that CEPED is an educational
mobilizing organization of ASUU that is supposed to be on all campuses.
The last
session of the students’ retreat was an interactive session that lasted for
about 2 hours. During the interactive session the NANS senate president was
given the opportunity to address students on the current state of NANS. In his
address, he explicitly stated in clear terms that NANS over the
years has been having issues and reservations against ASUU and because of that
it is only when those issues are resolved that NANS could start to have any
form of alliance with ASUU. The issues he mentioned ranged
from proscription of students’ unions, attacks on students democratic
rights; rights to belong to ideological groups, victimization and expulsion of
students’ leaders among many others. The duo of Dr. D.D Chup and Dr. Dele
Ashiru effectively responded to the allegations which the NANS senate president
said not until when they are resolved that NANS could start associating with
ASUU.
The NANS
president, Tijani Usman, who joined the retreat during the interactive session as
well stated that NANS has not been supporting or organizing students’ based
activities because there is no money in the purse of
the association and that can only be resolved when local unions begin to pay
capitation fees into NANS. During the
interactive session, comrade Dimeji Macaulay (member of the Education Rights
Campaign) commended ASUU for the support and role the union played in the
struggle for the reinstatement of the members of ERC who were victimized at the
Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Ile Ife. He further charged ASUU to continue
to join left organizations in programmes and interventions of this nature in
order to sharpen the understanding of the appropriate methods and approaches to
reclaim the Students Movement from jobbers and careerists.
In
reaction to the statements made by both NANS senate president and the national
president, many of the students’ union presidents in attendance immediately
posited that NANS had never been in support of the collective interest of the
generality of students. This position was particularly strongly canvassed by
union presidents who came from the North East universities. Clearly enough,
they radically rejected the positions of both the NANS senate president and the
National president and questioned both of them about how they got money to
organize protests in support of politicians if truly they do not have money to
fight for students’ interests. Interestingly, the union president from the
University of Calabar (UNICAL) suggested the formation of an alternative
association of students to begin to play the roles that NANS has abandoned.
During
the retreat 1000 copies of ERC leaflet were distributed. About 37 copies of DSM
paper and publications were sold while about 6 students signed up to join the
ERC.
Overall,
the retreat showed that potentials exist to rebuild the students' movement
especially through political interventions by the ERC and other left
organisations with the understanding however that only through the existence of
unions led by genuine socialists such as organized around DSM and others can a
fighting and working class oriented NANS reemerge.
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