As northern Nigerian communities are experiencing incessant killings the president of Student Union Government (SUG) Nasarawa State University, Keffi (NSUK), Comrade Newman Solomon Maitoro has urged the federal government to end the killings in order to safeguard the future of Nigerian youths.
Maitoro, stated this when he alongside other student leaders and Federal University, Lafia SUG president, Comrade. Abdulmumin Umar, protested the unending herders/ farmers and communal clashes at NSUK campus. Maitoro stressed that the crises between herders/farmers have instilled fears in the mind of the students thereby making the university campus empty of students even though the school resumed since last week.
The union president, said some parents were deeply affected by the conflict and were unable to send their children and wards back to school due to difficulties resulting from the conflicts. The union leader maintained that students in the North-central geopolitical zone are negatively affected by the killings associated with farmers/herders clashes. He however, expressed satisfaction by the effort of the federal government in the fight against insurgency, saying, “We stand with the government in her fight against insurgency and communal clashes.
We wish to note with great grief that students have been hard hit by these crises.” Maitoro further observed that as a result of herders/farmers crises many students were injured, displaced, killed or made orphans, but called on students to continue to maintain peace and be law abiding as well as focus on their studies in order to continue be patriotic citizens instead of ridiculing the country. He appealed to the perpetrators of the dastardly act to sheath their swords and give peace a chance for the development of the country.
In a related development, Maitoro also condemned the recent conflict between Egbira and Bassa in Kogi state which has affected Nasarawa state negatively, describing the crisis as shameful. He stressed that students are a family, because “they school together, attend lectures together, play games together and sleep together in one hostel, but their parents are fighting one another other.”
On his part, the SUG president, Federal University Lafia Comrade Abdulmumin Umar called on the federal government to establish police stations within campuses for the fear of unknown. He said the lives of students who are living off campus are exposed to danger because of the high level of insecurity in the country.
He disclosed that between January and May this year, the Federal University, Lafia alone lost two students to armed robbery attacked, and experienced 16 different armed robbery operations within the university community. In the same vein, the president, Mass Communication Students, NSUK chapter, Comrade Aristercus Akolo Emmanuel stated that crises have really affected the students’ resumption, lamenting that Mass Communication department that has over eight hundred students received less than 50 per cent of its students since resumption. Such development, he said, is not good for the future of Nigerian youths
