The National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) has refuted the allegation making the round that it got N150 million from presidency, saying that President Muhammadu Buhari was not the type that offers bribe.
The leadership of NANS distanced itself from the purported allegations by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
The Students Union, in a statement, signed by the National Public Relation Officer, Mr Adeyemi Amoo, asked Nigerian students to discountenance the allegations by ASUU, saying that the association was ready to protect the interest of all the students.
“Our attention has been drawn to the purported and sponsored allegation, that NANS had been bribed by President Muhammadu Buhari with a sum of N150million to protest against ASUU.
“We commend the well-meaning, intellectual and genuine civil society groups for not falling cheap for this blackmail, as we’ve gotten informed and reliably that they’ve also been lobbied by ASUU to join them in pushing such blackmail.
“We are not surprised that this blackmail isn’t flying beyond the pseudo groups they’ve been able to arrange and mobilise with cash.
“President Muhammadu Buhari, is a known person in character and style to virtually all Nigerians, even the oppositions knows that Buhari will never give out such amount of money for any reason(s) that is not of national benefits or developments.
” No doubt this propaganda might have seen the acceptance of the masses if it wasn’t targeted towards Buhari himself.”
Amoo explained that NANS had earlier declared November 17, 2018 as a nationwide day of mass action tagged: “SAVE EDUCATION RALLY ” held simultaneously across the states of the federation, to protest the incessant strikes across universities, polytechnics and colleges of Education.
He added that in October 2018, NANS national leadership, met with the Minister for Education, to fine-tune ways of putting a long term end to the regular carnival of strikes in the educational sector.
“We thereby demanded as the major stakeholders in the sectors, to always have representatives at the meeting of ASUU with Federal Government, as this was targeted towards adding to the strength and voice of ASUU, so as to make government yield to there demands in time.
“The Federal Government on her own side sees the request of been an observer at the negotiation table with ASUU as a welcome development.
“NANS was invited twice to the meeting of Federal Government with ASUU, ably represented by the NANS national president, Danielson Akpan, but was walked out twice by the ASUU leadership, insisting that such negotiations must not be done in the presence of younger ones.
“NANS leadership begins to wonder what reasons might be behind the blind insistence of ASUU that NANS must not observe the meeting, when the Federal Government has wholeheartedly approved our attendance at such meetings.”
source https://www.naijanews.com/2019/01/05/presidency-didnt-give-us-money-nans/
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