Kidnapping of students: NANS urges FG to convene security summit

Disturbed by the persistent attacks on schools and kidnappings of students, the leadership of the National Association of Nigerian has called on the Federal Government to without delay convene a security summit for stakeholders and experts to come up with a durable solution to the menace.

NANS President, Comrade Sunday Asefon, made the call, on Thursday, in Abuja at his formal inauguration and other newly elected Executive Officers of the Association.

He said the new officials of NANS would pursue vigorously agitation for a better finding of education, saying he would not relent in engaging the goverment and critical stakeholders in ensuring that quality education is delivered to the citizenry in a conducive atmosphere.

He decried the poor state of teaching and learning infrastructures, especially in public schools across the country, disclosing that after the inauguration, a Committee would be constituted to come up with specific areas of engagement with the goverment and other stakeholders in a bid to reposition education sector in Nigeria.

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Asefon said there was the need to also put an end to incessant strike actions by staff unions of universities and other tertiary institutions, noting particularly that the last strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) was the longest in the history of Nigeria and had a serious negative impact on the students.

He said: “On the issue of insecurity around the schools, within the time I have been elected as President of NANS, I have had cause to visit Katsina State and equally condemned the kidnapping of students in Niger and Zamfara States.

“But we are calling on the Federal Government to immediately call for a security summit where people will brainstorm and come up with the best solution to invasion and abduction of school children by criminal elements,” he said.

While stressing on the need for tertiary institutions to improve on their internally generated revenue, the NANS President warned against the arbitrary increase of tuition fees, saying such improvement of IGR must come through innovations, commerce, and value-added services by the institutions and “not arbitrary increment in tuition and other fees even when many states still struggle to pay the meagre national minimum wage of N30,000.”

NIGERIAN TRIBUNE