Nigeria: Students' Union Fights for free Education

Report (with Pictures) by the Revolutionary Socialist Vanguard (Sympathizing RCIT Section in Nigeria), 18 April 2019, https://revolutionarysocialistvanguard.wordpress.com/

The student wing of the Revolutionary Socialist Vanguard (RSV) based on the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) campus participated in the most recent students' union activities on the 16th of April 2019. The union executives, members of the RSV, and other left groups, hold a press conference under the aegis of the Union Action Committee. They exposed the role of the university management cum federal government to privatize public education in the country.

The most recent move was the eviction of students from the halls of residence on campus using decongestion as an excuse without building any new hall of residence for students to domicile on the campus; instead students are forced to secure private hostels, owned by top university officials, off the campus which has exposed these students to kidnappings, rape, burglary, incessant robbery and even the death of one student last year.

It should be stated that the university authorities of OAU has put a ban on unionism on the campus, hence the Union Action Committee has been the platform through which the RSV and other left groups on the campus has engaged and organized students to reject all executions of neo-liberal policies on the campus. The RSV has through the Union Action Committee and as an organization always demanded for:

1. Independent students' unionism; a general election for students so as to form well structured and organized students union which transcends to the democratization of the running of the university with students representative on every council, panel and committee of the school including the senate.

2. The proper funding of the education sector to at least 26% of the Federal allocation of the national budget as recommended by UNESCO and as opposed to the ever shrinking pittance given to the education sector by the Buhari regime.

3. Part of this allocation must be used to build new halls for students to live while renovating the old ones; the revamping of all laboratories and library in the school with the construction of a new campus based health centers.

4. The payment of all outstanding salaries and allowances of all teaching and non-teaching staff of the university, etc.

The last press conference of the 16th of April, 2019 saw most of these demands and more reported as a letter was also dispatched to the AIG of police in the area concerning the threats students are exposed to. The RSV OAU will not cease to organize students under radical platforms to challenge and reject all policies of commercialization of education and to stage students strike which demand for government funded, free and quality education.