Declare Bandits As Terrorists, NANS Tell Buhari

The National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to declare bandits, who are kidnapping students in the northern part of the country, as terrorists.

NANS said that anyone with a propensity to kidnap and kill students in large numbers should be declared as terrorists.

The student body had also resolved its factional crisis, which sprang up recently with the emergence of a splinter group, led by one Abdumajid Oyeniyi that was challenging the leadership of the national president, Sunday Asefon.

Oyeniyi said he has affirmed his loyalty to the Asefon-led national body of NANS in the interest of the over 41 million Nigerian students.

Speaking with journalists in Ado Ekiti yesterday, Asefon condemned the closure of some schools in some parts of the north due to the increasing wave of students’ abduction.

Asefon noted that NANS had met with a frontline Islamic Cleric, Sheikh Ahmed Gumi on the worrisome situation, adding that the Islamic scholar had been urged to tell the bandits to stay off public schools populated by children of the poor.

He said, “The government should beef up security in schools. It is our belief that students should be going to schools with the assurance that they will be secured.

“I have called on the federal government that they should declare these bandits abducting students in the northwest and north central as terrorists.”