The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has said condemned the killings of Nigerian Youths during the peaceful #EndSARS protests, describing the government’s response as a show that the future of Nigerian youths was under threat.
ASUU, in a statement on Friday’s night by its president, Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, condemned the manner with which the government handled the Lekki Massacre,, and noted that the repression and killing of any citizen exercising the constitutionally guaranteed rights to protest was unjustifiable and criminal.
ASUU then urged the Federal government to immediately, employ measures that would fish out the culprits and bring them to justice in order to calm frayed nerves. He further urged the Federal Government to stop security operatives from senseless killing of harmless youth protesters with infiltrators brought under check through active intelligence, adding that based on past betrayal, the youths were right to insist on seeing evidence of how well government has met its five-point demand.
“From all indications, SARS had become an instrument of oppression; intimidating, extorting and killing innocent youth and citizens on trump charges. “Those who survived the SARS experience tell gory tales. Mere name-changing of the killer-organisation (SARS) is therefore not enough to erase the deep-rooted impression of betrayal by a security outfit supported with tax-payers’ money.”, the statement began.“It will certainly not end the cruel murders widely perpetrated by SARS now changed to Special Weapon and Tactics (SWAT). ASUU notes with regrets that Nigeria has not grown beyond the conquest subjugation orientation of colonial rule evident in police and military brutalisation of the civilian populace. Any approach to security that ignores the existential needs of the citizenry — economic, social, cutural — is tenuous. Indeed, Nigeria’s approach to security will endure only when it evolves within the prism of the fundamental objectives of the Nigerian state which situate security in the deep bowels of welfare and good life for the citizenry. Government after government has distributed the wealth created by workers to the rich and powerful (in all parties and all regimes). Read also: SARS Officials Are Still Operating And ExtortingNigerians
“The future of the you people in Nigeria is threatened. They are living in conditions of hopelessness, disintegration of families, and despair about the present and the future. ”So long as the prevalent deprivations persist, lacking a hope for a better satisfying life conditions, it is expected that they will lose confidence in the present set up. “The solution is, therefore to embark as, an emergency, on a series of public programmes of economic and social welfare, as provided for in Chapter Two of the 1999 Constitution (amended) – provision of state-funded qualitative education, mass employment as well as other life-enhancing opportunities that characterise a welfare state”, the statement added.
“It will certainly not end the cruel murders widely perpetrated by SARS now changed to Special Weapon and Tactics (SWAT). ASUU notes with regrets that Nigeria has not grown beyond the conquest subjugation orientation of colonial rule evident in police and military brutalisation of the civilian populace. Any approach to security that ignores the existential needs of the citizenry — economic, social, cutural — is tenuous. Indeed, Nigeria’s approach to security will endure only when it evolves within the prism of the fundamental objectives of the Nigerian state which situate security in the deep bowels of welfare and good life for the citizenry. Government after government has distributed the wealth created by workers to the rich and powerful (in all parties and all regimes).
