BUHARI’S HANDBILLS, TEXT MESSAGES FLOOD CAMPUSES Whyte Ibidapo (UNILORIN), Paul Oluwatobi (UNILAG) Usman Yakubu (ABU)

As if not abreast of the recent call for generational shift in the Nigerian polity, some section of the students’ population in the country have taken up the campus campaign of two term presidential aspirants of the ANPP and now the party leader of the Congress for Progressive Change to their various campuses. The group of students who are leaving nothing to chances and are not hiding their preference for a Buhari candidacy have perfected various strategies to ensure the victory of the presidential hopeful. It will be remembered that just last week, the Jude Imagwe-led faction of NANS endorsed President Goodluck Jonathan as its preferred candidate. To walk the talk, NANS is mobilizing students to form Goodluck Clubs across institutions of the country. But apparently in a swift response to the ‘effrontery’ of NANS which had earlier put a ban on the students participation in off campus politics, another group operating under the name Campus Congress for Progressive Change, is outsmarting the NANS leadership, accusing it of selling out to incompetent politicians. While responding to interviews with Campuslife, the National Coordinator of the Group, Comrade Alabi Mohammed Abdulkareem lamented that NANS has a record of ‘cashing in on the collective interest of the teeming Nigerian students to endorse all manners of aspirants’. He regretted that what used to be an ideological block for the Nigerian students has been hijacked by few opportunist ‘professional students’ with active connivance of their corrupt mentors in the corridors of power. He vowed that this time around, his group and ‘of course all progressive minded students of virtually all higher institutions across the country who are already in the fold’ will not ‘sidon and look’ and allow what he called ‘the NANS menace’ to submerge them.
An investigation by Campuslife revealed that already various kinds of campaign handbills of General Buhari’s presidential aspiration are gradually finding their ways into the hands and the hostels of the students courtesy the CCPC. Last Monday at the SUG congress held in one of the institutions in the South West, some members of the group, who are also students’ leaders in the school took their time to distribute pro-Buhari handbills. In MAPOLY, Offa Poly, Oro College of Education, UI, LASU, ABSU, OAU, The Polytechnic Ibadan, AAU, ABU, BUK, NSU etc the subtle but gradual impact of the group has been felt. The group it was revealed has the backing of a handful Students Union members of some institution who are being schemed out in the NANS affairs.
But in a swift reaction, another faction of NANS led by Comrade Ini Ememobong, denied ever endorsing President Goodluck Jonathan, claiming that he has done nothing to show that he is pro- students. Ini who was speaking through the Public Relations Officer of the main stream NANS Comrade Bashir Ademola, wondered why a group of attention-seeking ‘come-and-raid’ students will defile the stand of NANS that it would not wave into the political fray intil the caost is till. He lamented that this same Jonathan, who everybody is now tossing around as a saint was part of the Yar’dua administration that grounded the educational sector for months arising from the industrial action embarked upon by the universities teachers last year. He regretted that students are easily not mindful of people’s records and pedigree before rushing into assessment, positing that on the tendency of some of these self styled students leaders to be corrupt and insensitive to the their colleagues’ aspirations.