Why NOUN Director Condemned Call For Students Unionism
Following the clamour for the existence of students’ union government within National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Abdullahi Abubakar, the director of the Dutse study centre in Jigawa state on Friday, December 4, dismissed the call by the students to have a union.
According the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) the Dutse director said that the institution was unlike other conventional universities in Nigeria where their students were domiciled in one place and shared common feelings and aspirations among themselves.
Abubakar noted that under the Open University system, every student was to himself or herself and that it wasn’t necessary for them to know one another as the university’s centres are scattered all over the country.
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The director stated that NOUN only provided academic support for the students to enable them realise their goals.
Sometime in August, students of the federal government university had issued a 7-day ultimatum to the vice chancellor of the institution, Professor Vincent Tenebe, over the ban on unionism.
They had in an open letter signed by the president of the congress of NOUN students, Abdulrazaq Hamzat, stressing that banning unionism in the institution amounted to a violation of the students’ rights to association as provided by the constitution of Nigeria, Pulse reports.
Hamzat had said: “It must be noted that, students have right, not one conferred on them by the university, but one which they possess as humans, conferred on them through the universal declaration of human rights and then the Nigerian constitution.”
“As a result of lack of Student Union in the Open University, the students of this noble University have been looked down upon by the society and their voice lost among comity of students.”
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However, the Dutse NOUN director lauded the vice chancellor, for moving the institution forward, stressing that within his tenure there had been four consecutive convocations.
He also added: “Not only that, every now and then, the number of students enrolling with the university is increasing.”
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has intervened in the compulsory seventy-five thousand Naira payment for personal computers imposed on students of the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) by the school’s authorities.
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