Niger NANS disowns nationwide hunger protest

The Niger State chapter of the National Association of Nigerian Students has disassociated itself from the planned nationwide hunger protest, claiming that hoodlums and other miscreants will hijack the event.

The student body said hoodlums would take advantage of the protest to engage in criminal activities, including looting of shops, vandalism and robbery.

Making reference to the 2012 subsidy removal protest in which President Bola Tinubu and other prominent Nigerians were involved, the students alleged that the protest was also hijacked while innocent people were clamped into detention.

An official of the Students Joint Campus Council, Abdulsemiu Abdulganiu, who spoke with our correspondent on Friday, said they did not know the persons behind the planned protest and what they sought from the government.

Abdulganiu said, “Why we are not going to join the protest because we don’t know the organisers of the protest, we don’t know the motive behind organising this protest, and we don’t know what will be the outcome of the protest.

“You cannot be doing anything that you don’t have information about because a lot of things can happen under this protest. When you know the organisers of a protest, they will be able to highlight what they need from the protest, and they will be able to state what they want the government to do, but when there is no organiser, anybody can come under the guise of the protest and carry out any action.

“This protest will be hijacked because we know the hardship everybody is going through, and there are those who just want to use the protest to rob innocent people of their property. They will go and loot shops and vandalise property. We have been part of protests in the past and we saw what happened.

“When we were doing protest during the 2012 fuel subsidy removal. We went on a protest to the National Assembly, and on our way back, hoodlums hijacked it and started looting people’s property, collecting people’s phones, collected cars and laptops from people and at the end of the day, it was innocent people that were arrested and made to pay for them”.

Chairman of the state NANS, Salihu Yusuf, who addressed newsmen on Friday, said the students were distancing themselves from the protest because they believed that dialogue was the only reasonable way to resolve any issues.

He said, “The National Association of Nigerian Students Joint Campus Council Niger State chapter wishes to categorically and unequivocally distance the entire students’ community in Niger State from the planned protest as it is not the best way to resolve whatever situation we find ourselves in. Dialogue is the best.

“We refuse to be hoodwinked into the belief that protest is the only way of getting out of any problem faced by the human race; therefore, we are using this medium to inform Nigerian students to shun this call to protest.”

Niger State Governor, Mohammed Bago, had announced that Niger youths were not going to be a part of any hunger protest, saying they were peace-loving.