BY KOLA IBRAHIM
February 15th, 2008
This article is an edited
version of an article written on the state of NANS
in 2006 in the wake of the decaration by the Hembe-ed
NANS leadership for Obasanjo’s life presidency. It
is reproduced here in the wake of the coming NANS
convention which has been postponed three times.
Without mincing words, the state of the National
Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) is nothing
to write home about. The Nigerian students’ movement
has lost all the radical fibres it was formerly
recognized for. The media is replete with news about
treachery of various layers of NANS leadership; from
giving awards to politicians and businessmen to
issuing out statements in support of one politicians
or party to another. Even before this time, the NANS
leadership had identified with various anti-student,
pro-establishment policies including acceptance of
the hostel privatization and N1000 compulsory
insurance policy of the federal government and the
insurance agencies, with the Hembe-led NANS
leadership’s declaration for Obasanjo’s third term
being the peak of this treachery. Not only this, it
had at various times recognized through giving of
awards to, anti-student moneybag politicians who
have at one time or the other, individually or
severally supported policies and agenda that put
money out of the pockets of the poor people of
Nigeria to those of the already super-rich. In
short, it has become another pawn in the chessboard
of the ruling class while standing against
everything that NANS originally stood for. To day,
there are more than four secretariats of NANS each
seeking patronage from politicians. Though a
so-called Unity Convention has been organized, but
it will only justify the fraud of the existing
elements laying claim to leadership.
However, to be fair with these leaderships, their
predecessors had laid a solid foundation for this
“historic” sell out. One could vividly recall the
reactionary, pro-state positions of the Tony Nwoye,
Daniel Onjeh, Segun Olaleye, et al, who all sold out
Nigerian students away to the corrupt and backward
set of ruling class in place today, just to satisfy
their pecuniary interests while Nigerian students
are being daily attacked through the
commercialization and privatization of education
policies among other anti-poor policies of the
Obasanjo government and it clones in states. In
fact, one can trace the history of ideological death
of NANS to the 1994 convention in which power was
taken away from the hands of the undemocratic
ex-Stalinists to the hands of the reactionary,
pro-state elements, who banked on the general
dissatisfaction of the student activists with the
undemocratic means in which the organization was
being run (by the ex-Stalinists) to entrench
themselves in the leadership, adequately supported
with funds and logistics by various government
agencies.
Aside the NANS national leadership intellectual
collapse, the various structures of NANS – Zonal,
State Joint Campus Committees and even, each
students’ union – have either sold out to
managements or politicians or lack the requisite
intellectual wherewithal to lead successful and
genuine struggles of students. Just few days ago, I
attended a parliamentary session of one of the
polytechnics in Osun State, and it was regrettable
that students’ unions will be approving traveling
allowance for a NANS trip when they were actually
conveyed to the botched convention free of charge.
Yet, during the radical days of NANS, the Nigerian
students’ movement is not only known for fighting
for its members but also that of the workers and
other oppressed strata. One could easily recall the
anti-SAP struggles and the anti-military struggles.
Then, you have no business in being students’ union
activist without having a leftist leaning; without
having any ideological understanding of the society.
But with the collapse of the Soviet Union which many
uninformed ex-Stalinists could not explain at the as
being a product of the undemocratic and bureaucratic
nature of the leadership of the Soviet Union, the
best of the then student activists dissolved into
human “rightism” while the reactionary layer become
agents of various governments at all levels.
Successive student activists could not see any true
example of a genuine ex-NANS activist but those who
have turned their radical credentials to means of
survival.
Coupled with this is the collapse of the genuine
leadership of labour movement which would have
mobilized the power of Nigerians masses – including
students to fights successful imperialist
governments in Nigeria since independence. The lack
of the ideological base of the human rights
organizations on the campuses and their failure to
give a scientific economic cum political analysis of
the Nigerian state led to their isolation from other
mass organizations including workers’ movement and
subsequent infiltration of their organizations by
the pro-state elements. While the former led to lack
of a holistic manner of struggling by genuine
students’ leaders which make them to adopt
sectarian, anti-working class and anarchistic
methods of struggling; the latter led to
degeneration of these organizations in many campuses
leading to sell out among students’ activists who
rise to union offices through the credentials of
these organizations but sell students out to the
management and the state, thus signaling the
collapse of many students’ unions. Added to this is
the conscious role of the school authorities and the
state in destroying the legacy of genuine students’
unionism either by buying over of students’ leaders
or using naked force like the cultists, police and
victimization as in OAU now) to deal with genuine
student activists. The fisrt attempt is the Abisogun
Panel set-up by Babangida junta to curtail radical
students’ activism, which made students’ unionism
voluntary thus making the generation of fund through
students by unions (which remit some percentage to
NANS) to be difficult thus giving excuses to
opportunist and reactionary leaderships of NANS to
turn to politicians for fund, thus laying the basis
for NANS collapse. This also found its resonance in
the structures of NANS. We are witnesses to how the
special assistant to ex-President Obasanjo on
students’ matters, usually comes to NANS convention
to bribe senators and use brute force of the state
to stop genuine student activists from raising their
voices against bad governmental policies.
Therefore, Nigerian students’ movement must start
afresh and build a new organizations that will base
itself on the idea of transformation of the society
from this man-eat-man, decadent neo-liberal system
that prioritize profits for the rich few against the
welfare of the working people including the
students; to an egalitarian system where the wealth
of the country will be collectively used for
people’s need as against that of imperialism and its
hangers-on in the country’s polity. The genuine
activists remaining on campuses must stand up and
build a new pan-Nigerian students’ movement that
will not only defend the rights of Nigerian youth to
free, well funded and qualitative education with
democratic impute of the workers’ and students’
unions in the running of the education sector but
also link its struggle with that of other sections
of the oppressed layers –workers, artisans,
professionals, etc and defend people’s rights to
better socio-economic system that will defend
people’s welfare. The present NANS is not
sacrosanct; it was also an offshoot of other
students’ organizations – WASU and NUNS. The present
NANS has played its historic roles and it is now
serving as fetter to the struggles of the Nigerian
students and people. Building a new national
students’ movement require organizing a national
campaign against the plans of the government to
commercialize education and hike fees across
campuses. This campaign will link genuine activists
in unions and organization together. The fact that
virtually no students’ union in the country has
condemned the present madness going on in NANS is a
reflection of the degeneracy that has eaten deep
into students’ movement. Therefore, building a new
pan-Nigerian students’ movement mean building a
genuine students’ structures in each campus. The
planned NANS convention, where unity or schist, will
never change the rottenness in the structure, it
will only accentuate it. Furthermore, an ideological
rebirth is necessary for a genuine students’
movement. The current situation where the market
neo-liberalism has become the idea of governments,
which has meant privatization, commercialization and
cut in social spending, need to be resisted by a
radical socialist oriented perspective of Nigerian
students which will defend free, functional,
publicly funded education system, healthcare, job
for all and adequate wages and pension for all
coupled with nationalization of the economy under
the democratic management by the working people
themselves.
This is the time when Nigerian students ought to be
asking why Nigeria will be wallowing in unimaginable
wealth (over $200 billion since 1999) and yet the
capitalist government could not provide free,
qualitative education to its citizens which has led
to just ten percent of Nigerian youth being in
schools. Rather than for government to fund free and
qualitative education, it has continue to starve it
more of funds while encouraging private individuals
(majority of them, politicians and government
lackeys) to gain huge profits from
government-induced public education collapse. This
contradiction requires a solid, consistent and
radical students’ organization that will be able to
expose and raise the banner of the progressive
unionism. We must also know that the demands of
students are also political because the present age
government is one whose ideological basis is rooted
in scrupulous globalized capitalist neo-liberalism
and the invisible hands of the market and
imperialism. This crooked government, while it
continues to regenerate itself in brazen corruption,
will continue to stand for imperialism; stand
against public education, social welfare, etc.
Therefore, the new Nigerian students’ movement, if
finally formed should link up with other pro-people
and working class organizations to provide the
requisite leadership and the radical working
people’s party that will champion the demand for
massive funding of social services – free education,
free health, adequate wages and pension, clean
water, cheap and public transportation, mass and
cheap housing, job for all, etc. if the nation’s
economy is nationalized which will provide enough
fund, that is currently being held by just 1% of the
population who are controlling 80% of the nation’s
wealth. Though, there is also a rightwing movement
going on in British students’ movement which tends
to sideline the mass of students while giving the
organization to the capitalist government, but this
is being challenged by progressive students’
organizations in Britain . The examples of 2006
French movement where students played major roles
along with workers, in battling Dominique Villepin’s
anti-poor labour policy and the mass movements of
students against education commercialization in
Greece are signs of what a genuine students’
movement can achieve if it bases itself on genuine
ideas.
IBRAHIM KOLAWOLE (kmarx4live@yahoo.com )
EDUCATION RIGHTS CAMPAIGN (ERC)
Obafemi Awolowo University , Ile-Ife
NIGERIAN STUDENTS’ MOVEMENT IN PERSPECTIVE