When students stood for themselves, their parents and the people, By Ahmed Aminu-Ramatu Yusuf

The difference between the Student Union Movement of the 1980s and early ’90s, and today’s Student Union Government, is like one between daylight and night.

The National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) rose from the ashes of the National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS) which was incinerated in April 1978 by General Olusegun Obasanjo-led military despots.

NUNS and NANS, however, shared some commonalities. They saw themselves as: “the conscience of the nation”; “the thermometer and barometer of public opinion”; “the voice of the voiceless”; and “the loudspeaker of the oppressed”. Both shared the same programmatic methodology of struggle, namely “Operations Consultation, Consolidation and Confrontation (O3Cs).”

Their leaders and activists were fond of making the same quotations in their mobilisation activities against the school authorities and the state. One popular one, was: “justifiable justice against unjustifiable injustice is justifiable injustice; at this stage, confrontation is conformation with natural law.” They also fondly quoted Algerian revolutionary, Franz Fanon: “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.” Another was: “The future will have no pity for those men and women who, possessing the exceptional privilege of being able to speak words of truth to their oppressors, have instead taken refuge in an attitude of passivity, of mute indifference and sometimes of cold complexity”.

Both organisations unapologetically stood and fought for education, democracy, development, Pan-Africanism and humanism. They were thoroughly anti-imperialist and identified with the national liberation struggles within and outside Africa.

Yet, there were differencs. Whereas NUNS saw students as “leaders of tomorrow”, NANS saw students as “workers of tomorrow”. While the former believed that it was “partners in progress” with the government, the latter was for “Workers-Students’ Alliance” to be concretized through “students-workers’ solidarity”.

Whereas the NUNS adopted the three-dimensional motto of Commendation, Condemnation and Recommendation (CCR), NANS adopted “Aluta Continua, Victoria Acerta”; “An injury to one is an injury to all”; and “Everything for the struggle, Victory for all”

Thus, governments made concrete efforts to befriend both organisations. But NANS leaders and activists were ever suspicious of politicians and ‘militicians’ (or military politicians).

Between the 1980s and the early 1990s, NANS propagated that politicians and ‘militicians’ were “anti-students”, “anti-working people”, “parasitic”, “dangerous”, “subversive”, “hostile” and “antithetical” to progress, democracy and development.

It propagated that this group was responsible for the poverty, ignorance and diseases bedeviling Nigerians. It held these forces as primarily responsible for the authoritarianism in the country, Nigeria’s all-round underdevelopment, and its subservience to imperialism. It also posited that these elites were responsible for the underdevelopment of education, the subversion of academic freedom, the destruction of the autonomy of educational institutions, and the humiliation of the entire academic community. Hence, that they should be isolated from the students’ movement and the campuses.

Consequently, students who aligned with politicians or the military regimes, were strongly opposed and, kept out of the leadership positions of NANS and, in many cases, campus students unions. This was done by portraying them to the rank-and-file as “opportunists”, “hedonists”, “reactionaries”, “degenerates”, “retrogrades”, “retrogressives”, and “desperate petty bourgeois elements”.

NANS propagated that the student-politician was a fissiparous and cankerous element. It argued that his primary objective was to ‘bourgeoisify’ and balkanise the students’ population along partisan, ethnic, and regional lines. And in so doing, to subordinate students’ interests to those of the state, school authorities and other anti-peoples’ forces, for his their selfish interests. All these, they argued, would weaken students’ unity and their solidarity with the working peoples.

Student union leaders fraternizing with governments and school administrations, or opposing popular causes, were described as “traitors to students and peoples’ cause”, and often impeached. In some cases, they were politically excommunicated by the majority of the students. In a few cases, those identified as spies, were chased out of the campuses.

The civilian and military governments politically feared and respected the students’ movement. They went the extra mile to win NANS to their side but failed. Second Republic President Shehu Shagari, for instance, lambasted this widespread student activism. He stated at the May 1981 convocation ceremony of the Bayero University, Kano that students’ protest-demonstrations were “incidents of lawless behaviour and misdirected aggression”, which were “destructive, violent and hostile to constituted authority.” He added: “Our campus revolutionaries are familiar with test-book clichés of what a revolution is all about and demonstrate by utterances and actions that they are strangers to the real conditions and needs of the Nigerian masses.”

The Buhari and Babangida military regimes, apart from condemning students’ activism, “proscribed” the NANS. But NANS disdainfully disregarded the “proscription” and called on its rank-and-file to do same. Its leaders and activists maintained that NANS, unlike NUNS, was not registered by government. As such, that government lacked the legal right, political power or moral authority to proscribe it. Besides, it pointed out, students have the human, civil and constitutional rights to organise in defence, protection and promotion of their rights, interests and welfare.

Therefore, that “proscription” and “non-recognition” of NANS by government was inconsequential, null and void. 1990 NANS President, Opeyemi Bamidele – now, Senate Leader – buttressed this point when he told the press: “NANS exists; it enjoys international recognition by International Student Organisations. Recognition by Government is a non-issue. No regime can ban NANS. It has more root than the Military which shot its way to power or civilians who rigged elections to get to the top. NANS has more credibility than any regime Nigeria ever had… We maintain that we owe our existence to the Nigerian students not the governments. Rather than NANS being weakened by the hostility towards the association by the government, NANS has continued to grow stronger and more equipped to champion the popular course of the Nigerian Students and people… NLC [Nigeria Labour Congress] was banned in 1988 with a decree. It remained so until the ban was lifted. ASUU [Academic Staff Union of Universities] was banned in 1988 again by a decree and it remained so since then. No decree banned NANS. Anyway, no decree created NANS in the first instance. No decree is even capable of banning NANS.”

NANS withstood state repression because it was student-rooted, well-informed, ideas-driven, and was led by ideologically informed students’ leaders and activists. This can be discerned from former Education Minister, Professor Jibril Aminu’s media interview in 1988: “It was found that wherever there was trouble they [NANS’ leaders] took over the institution of learning. If the Vice-Chancellor or Rector or the Provost talked to the student union, his own student union executive, they would tell him that they were waiting for instructions from the National Secretariat [of NANS]. They would not even listen to him at all.”

Those were the days when the Students Union was a movement, not today that it styles itself a ‘Government.’

Ahmed Aminu-Ramatu Yusuf worked as deputy director, Cabinet Affairs Office, The Presidency, and retired as General Manager (Administration), Nigerian Meteorological Agency, (NiMet). Email: aaramatuyusuf@yahoo.com