To protest the seven-month standoff between the federal government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, the National Association of Nigerian Students, or NANS, has promised to halt activities at international airports across the nation.
Speaking at Akure, Ojo Raymond Olumide, Chairman of the NANS National Task Force on “End ASUU Strike Now,” criticized the federal government’s treatment of the striking professors and of education in general.
Olumide said that “the four-day shutdown of busy highways and expressways had been a success, hence the move to disrupt international travels in order for the bourgeois and the government to feel the pains that had subjected students to in the past seven months.
He claimed that the students had grown weary of begging both parties to end the strike.
The airports that would be occupied will remain closed until the strike is called off, according to Olumide, who also emphasized that the government of President Muhammadu Buhari is responsible for paying all outstanding arrears and salaries owed to the lecturers.
“We shall begin another round of protest next week by storming the airspaces to #OccupyTheAirports. We want to let the world know about the pains and anguish students are going through.
“Nigerian students whose parents create the commonwealth cannot continue to be suffering at home alongside our lecturers while the few who gain from our sweats and blood have their kids abroad jollying and flexing.
“We call on students to rise and join us as we take our destinies into our hands. Our demands remain consistently clear and simple. We Call on ASUU leadership for a meeting as soon as possible to discuss Solidarity actions and plan for the next phase of the struggles.
“Nigerian Students are not subjected to security agencies and we haven’t seen any step from them to avert the ASUU strike. He said they could not tell them that they were not aware of what is going on.
“Being on the road for the past four days and had garnered a lot
of solidarity. Grounding the airport is for us to get solidarity and we will keep on grounding the local and international airports they know the effect of us grounding the airport, and the only thing we request for them is to open our campuses back.
Read Also: ASUU strike: Court to rule on FG’s prayer on September 19
“They should give enough budgetary allocation, we are not asking for 26 percent we are asking for 22 percent.
“We pass a vote of No Confidence on both Ministers of Labour and Education. We Call on the Buhari government to pay all outstanding arrears and salaries of the lecturers.
“The policy of “No Work No Pay” is a Fascist one; it is, therefore condemnable and nonacceptable to all the millions of students in Nigeria.
“We will, by this statement, not beg again. We shall be mobilizing all students to shut down the country. No Education! No Movement!
Olumide, who chastised Babatunde Raji Fashola, Minister of Works, over his alleged remark regarding the students’ blockage of federal roads, claimed that the strike had persisted because no children of the political class were attending public universities.
Read Also: ASUU strike: “Blocking Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is violation of the Law” FG tells NANS
“Through Nigerians, the Federal and state governments became and are still uncomfortable with our protests.
” Instead of them responding to us responsibly and what have you; we were shocked that the Minister of Works Babatunde Fashola came up with an illegal utterance befitting of only rabble-rousers and political irritants by calling out fundamental Human Rights “illegal!”
“What Minister Fashola has done is amazing. After all, the camera he found at LekkiTollGate after the massacre is still a mystery.
“Yet, the Minister’s outburst is also another evidence that the Buhari government hates real educational development.
“They are never apologetic and are hell-bent on destroying every remnant of State welfare left. They prefer to kill the public schools instead of revamping them.
“Nigerian students are not surprised that the Buhari government does not care about public education.
“After all, all the politicians have their kids schooling abroad while the children of the masses that constitute 99% of the population are only fit to be thugs, hard workers, and sex slaves.
Olumide added that “We dare say that this cruelty will not continue anymore. And, it is on this note we call on the national leadership of ASUU to synergize with Nigerian students in achieving this struggle that we have commenced by ensuring that a state of emergency is declared in the educational sector.”
