The National Association of Nigerian Students, (NANS) has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to declare bandits kidnapping students in the northern part of the country as terrorists.
NANS said anyone with the propensity to kidnap and kill students in large numbers, as currently witnessed in some northern states, should be considered a terrorist by any sovereign country.
The students body said it has resolved its factional crisis, which sprang up recently with the emergence of AbduMajid Oyeniyi splinter group, that was challenging the leadership of the National President, Sunday Asefon. With this development, Oyeniyi said he has reunited with the main body and affirmed his loyalty to the Asefon-led national union.
Speaking with newsmen in Ado Ekiti, Ondo State yesterday, Asefon, rued the lingering closure of schools in some parts of the North, especially in Kaduna State, due to increasing wave of students’ abduction.
Asefon said NANS had met with frontline Islamic Cleric, Sheikh Ahmed Gumi on the spate of kidnappings and killings of innocent students, saying the Islamic scholar had been handed the mandate to appeal to bandits when the opportunity avails to stay off public schools populated by children of the poor.
He also said he had met with different stakeholders in northern states to plead that they provide security for school children of the poor.
“They should just leave our students alone and let them pursue their future”, he stated.
