Falana seeks revitalisation of student unionism

Lagos constitutional lawyer Femi Falana has called on comrades and students to work together to adopt various methods of revitalising the students’ union movement.

Falana, while chairing the 20th Anti-Corruption Situation Room (ACSR), themed “Harnessing the potentials of student’ Unionism and activists towards the promotion of good governance, transparency and accountability in Nigeria,” said this was important as youths have a role to play in moulding the future.

“The NASS is perennially engaged in violence and of course student leaders today are either agents of their vice chancellors, the government of the day or other negative forces while student unions are banned or proscribed whenever students ask any question that are critical, therefore, this meeting is of fundamental importance,” he said.

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Innocent Chukwuma, the Founder/CEO, Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing/Director of Ford Foundation, who was also a panelist at the webinar, spoke on setting agenda for a broad based social engagement of ex-student leaders in the current governance milieu, emphasised the needs for political education among current students’ union leaders.  He said unionism, during his time as a student was an ideology.

“The east and the west, you either align with the east or the west. if you align with the east you will be grounded in socialism and communist ideologies, and we had literature all over campuses that enabled us to get up to speed with the happenings, soon, the movement began to be divided and the triumph of capitalism over socialism, though temporary at that time, eroded the ideological base of the struggle and what came in its place is what we might call identity politics,” he recalled.

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Omoyele Sowore, an activist and a former presidential aspirant advised that comrades who have been involved in the struggle for good governance, transparency and accountability should begin to document their struggles in the form of detention diaries, books and even documentaries.