Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has said youths’ reaction to activities in the country is a reflection of suffering imposed by leaders.
It said this in reference to the #EndSARS protests, especially the killings of protesters at Lekki tollgate, adding that the future of Nigerian youths is under threat.
The union, in a statement on Friday night by its president, Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, condemned in strongest terms, the manner in which the government handled the Lekki incident which led to the loss of lives and injuries of various degrees.
Ogunyemi noted that the repression and killing of any citizen exercising the constitutionally guaranteed rights to protest was unjustifiable and criminal.
He urged the Federal Government to immediately, employ measures that would fish out the culprits and bring them to justice in order to calm frayed nerves.
The ASUU boss further implored the Federal Government to stop security operatives from senseless killing of armless youth protesters with infiltrators brought under check through active intelligence.
He added that based on past betrayal, the youths were right to insist on seeing evidence of how well government has met its five-point demand.
In his words;
From all indications, SARS had become an instrument of oppression; intimidating, extorting and killing innocent youth and citizens on trump charges.
Those who survived the SARS experience tell gory tales. Mere name-changing of the killer-organisation (SARS) is therefore not enough to erase the deep-rooted impression of betrayal by a security outfit supported with tax-payers’ money.
It will certainly not end the cruel murders widely perpetrated by SARS now changed to Special Weapon and Tactics (SWAT).
Oyeyemi wrote;
ASUU notes with regrets that Nigeria has not grown beyond the conquest subjugation orientation of colonial rule evident in police and military brutalisation of the civilian populace.
Any approach to security that ignores the existential needs of the citizenry — economic, social, cutural — is tenuous.
He expressed;
Indeed, Nigeria’s approach to security will endure only when it evolves within the prism of the fundamental objectives of the Nigerian state which situate security in the deep bowels of welfare and good life for the citizenry.
Government after government has distributed the wealth created by workers to the rich and powerful (in all parties and all regimes).
The ASUU boss expressed;
The youth’s response is a reflection of the suffering imposed upon them by Nigeria’s rulers and their partners from Europe and America. It is a suffering Nigerians of all ages are all experiencing.
The youth’s ongoing protest is a challenge to those who hold political power to urgently and rightly address the core issues of poverty, homelessness, unemployment, poor education, and lack of access to social services such as adequate healthcare, good roads, housing and electricity for majority of Nigerians.
The future of the young people in Nigeria is threatened. They are living in conditions of hopelessness, disintegration of families, and despair about the present and the future.
He concluded;
So long as the prevalent deprivations persist, lacking a hope for a better satisfying life conditions, it is expected that they will lose confidence in the present set up.
The solution is, therefore to embark as, an emergency, on a series of public programmes of economic and social welfare, as provided for in Chapter Two of the 1999 Constitution (amended) – provision of state-funded qualitative education, mass employment as well as other life-enhancing opportunities that characterise a welfare state.
