By Soni Daniel, Northern Region Editor

The National Association of Nigerians Students, NANS, has asked the Federal Government to urgently declare a state of emergency in the nation’s education sector in order to arrest the rot and instability inherent in the system.

University students during one of NANS protests.

Besides, the students, drawn from ten northern states’ tertiary institutions, have called on the Academic Staff Unions of Universities, ASUU, to suspend its ongoing strike and return to the negotiation table with the federal government as a means of resolving the crisis in the universities.

These decisions were contained in a communiqué issued at the end of the meeting of the students held at the College of Education, Minna, Niger State, and made available to Vanguard yesterday in Abuja.

In the document, which was jointly signed by the Convention Chairman, Comrade Adamu Kabir Matazu and Gambo Umar, the Secretary of the Zone, the students also urged the federal government to increase education funding to the 26 percent threshold specified by the United Nations in order to address the deficit in infrastructure and human capital.

NANS took a swipe at some politicians playing politics with the health of President Muhammadu Buhari and asked them to stop playing God on the matter, as no human was beyond sickness.

“NANS frowns on the attitude of some Nigerians politicising the president’s health challenge and appealed to them to be guided by national interest and desist from their ungodly behaviour and give the needed support to the President to deliver on his mandate to Nigerians.

“We ask them to desist from their ungodly behaviour that is already heating up the polity and setting the country at odds with itself,” NANS warned.

The students, however, praised the federal government’s effort in checkmating corruption in the country and passed a vote of confidence on the EFCC chairman, Ibrahim Magu.