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Nigeria Student Organizations
Students were a perpetual source of dissent. During the
1970s, the National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS), a
government-sanctioned federation of all student unions in
Nigeria
and of Nigerian students abroad, actively opposed
government
policies on several issues, including students' rights and
educational conditions. In April 1978, NUNS instigated or
participated in nationwide campus protests against
increased
university fees, during which police and army units killed
or
seriously wounded at least twenty students. The FMG
responded by
closing three universities indefinitely, by banning NUNS,
and by
appointing a commission of inquiry, after which several
senior
university officials and students were dismissed.
The next major round of violent student demonstrations
occurred in May 1986, when police killed more than a dozen
Ahmadu
Bello University students protesting disciplinary action
against
student leaders observing "Ali Must Go" Day (referring to
the
minister of education), in memory of students killed in
the 1978
demonstration. Disorders spread rapidly to other campuses
across
the country. The government imposed a national ban on
demonstrations and closed nine of Nigeria's fifteen
universities,
which were not reopened until July. The National
Association of
Nigerian Students (NANS), founded in 1980 to replace the
banned
NUNS and itself theoretically banned as a result of the
May 1986
riots, called for dismissals of government, university,
and
police officials. Its call was supported by the NLC. After
a
commission of inquiry, the government accepted some
recommendations for removals but dissolved all student
unions for
the remainder of the academic year. NANS, however,
rejected the
commission's findings and, in May 1987, five universities
were
closed in connection with campus incidents involving
remembrances
of the anniversary of Ahmadu Bello University student
slayings
the year before.
In February 1988, the government closed Ahmadu Bello
University and the University of Nigeria campuses at
Nsukka and
Enugu and narrowly averted a NANS-supported nationwide
student
strike by rescinding a decision to try nine Nsukka
students for
arson and property damage. Two months later, five
universities
were shut down after student riots in Jos to protest a
3-percent
rise in gasoline prices, during which several persons,
including
two police offices died. Between May and July 1989,
student riots
in several southern states again led to closure of several
universities and a secondary school and forced Babangida
to
cancel an official visit to France. Student rioters in
Benin
City, joined by townspeople, burned vehicles, government
buildings, and two prisons from which about 600 inmates
escaped;
the riot was put down by police and army units two days
later.
Rioting soon spread to Ibadan and Lagos, where soldiers
again
were called in to restore order; to Obafemi Awolowo
University
School of Agriculture's Akure campus near Ibadan, where
about
seventy students were arrested; and to the College of
Agriculture
in Yande, near Loko, in Benue State. The government closed
six
schools until March 1990 but permitted them to reopen on
October
30 after requiring returning students to sign a formal
pledge of
good behavior. To deter further student unrest, in early
1990 the
AFRC issued Decree Number 47. It imposed a five-year jail
term
and/or a N50,000 fine on any student found guilty of
organizing
or participating in demonstrations, set up special
tribunals to
try offenders, and again banned the NANS.
Data as of June 1991
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