A former president of the National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, has written to the leadership of the association demanding to be removed from all NANS record and archive.
Abdul Mahmud, an accomplished human right lawyer and activist who was NANS president from 1990 to 1992 said the decision became necessary owing to the ‘shameful’ outing of the Danielson Bamidele Akpan-led NANS at the presidential villa on Thursday where they had threatened to physically remove members of the striking Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, from the their staff quarters.
The NANS leaders also promised the president 20 million votes.
However, reacting to the ‘shameful’ display by NANS leadership at the state house, Abdul Mahmud wrote that “This morning I wrote the leadership of National Association of Nigerian Students-NANS- asking that my name be expunged or removed from the record, archive and roll of the association.
” As the 8th President of NANS (November 1990- January 1992), I find the threat of the present leadership to forcefully eject members of Academic Staff Union of Universities- ASUU- from their staff quarters and break the current strike called by ASUU to draw attention to the rot in higher education as churlish and stupid.
“Each generation, including the present generation of students leaders, discovers, fulfills or betrays its mission, Fanon famously exalted; but when this generation, ignorant of its history, decides to wine and dine with its enemies, those who chose to ban NANS when it demanded for the improvement in the conditions of learning, I have no business to be associated with it or its organisation, NANS.
“As I noted in my statement to NANS, “meeting with a President who served students bullets when they asked for bread, who banned NANS in 1984 and jailed its President, Lanre Arogundade, for demanding improved funding of education is the height of betrayal”.
