Pastor Tunde Bakare, the Convener of Save Nigeria Group, on Monday said students unionism had fallen from its pinnacle of intellectual doggedness to become mere appendage of political parties.
Bakare, who made this assertion in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, at the 2014 anniversary of the International Day of Students, said: “It is also now a tool for corrupt politicians.”
In a paper titled: “Good Governance: Sustainability of Democracy, the Role of Students in the Forthcoming General Election,” Bakare said students unionism in the country had lost its activists steam and was in a sorry state.
He called on the students’ body to embark on a journey of rebirth to return to the good old days of students’ activism.
He said: “To achieve this, you must rid yourselves of cultism and other self-destructive tendencies and take back student unionism from hoodlums and charlatans.
“You must restore student unionism to its glorious days.
“After undergoing such rebirth, the student union must become a shining light to the dark polity.”
Bakare urged the students to make informed and issue-based decisions in exercising their franchise and to protect their votes as much as they could.
He said: “As individual and as bodies of students, before elections, you must first of all reflect, evaluate, reconstruct, develop and organise.
“Individual students must take responsibility for their lives and take personal development seriously for one cannot contribute meaningfully to societal development without adequate personal development.”
In a speech, Prof. Pat Utomi, the Founder of Centre for Value in Leadership, expressed concern over the looming hard times awaiting most state governors in the country following the steady drop in oil prices.
Utomi said that in the next few months ahead, most governors or state governments in Nigeria would neither be able to pay salaries to their workers nor render even basic services to the citizens.
Utomi said that unless the cost of governance was reduced drastically, there might be no quick solution when the impending hard times eventually arrive at the doorstep of the state governments.
“For about a year, there has been a gradual shortfall in monthly federal allocations going to states and local governments in the country and there is the fear that it could go worse as oil price dropped below expectations,” he said.
Utomi explained that education was expensive particularly at the tertiary level, saying that if the nation and citizens must enjoy qualitative education, the governments, private organisations and parents should partake in the funding.
He identified one of the problems militating against the nation’s march to greatness as “entitlement mentality” of the citizens.
He said that this had frozen their ability to understand or see the connection between work and reward.
According to him: “Nigerians see things from the perspective of the right to share whatever that is available rather than work to earn it.”
In a remark, Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State enjoined the students to be peaceful and to shun cultism.
Amosun said they should not allow themselves to be used as political thugs during elections.