Bestman Michael

• Students & Workers to Demand & Struggle for Adequate Public Funding of Education and Democratic involvement of all stakeholders in the Management of Funds and the University!

The Movement for a Socialist Alternative, Uniben, congratulates students on their recent struggle and victory which led to the reversal of the charge fee of ₦20, 000 for late payment of school fees by the school management.

This victory in itself is a statement of rejection by the students of any attempt to increase fees in any guise whether now or in the immediate future. For certain the management would have been further emboldened to at a later time increase the school fees, if students had not challenged the additional charged fees, through the struggle to have it reversed. The MSA, therefore, congratulate the mass of student for this struggle and victory, which must be protected and consolidated.

First, by insisting that no student must be victimized or penned down, subsequently for victimization, we reject the attempt by the school management to even consider suspending the former SUG secretary Lucky Abraham Goodlife in the first instance, we are appalled by the attempt and see it as a slap on the right to hold an alternative opinion and so express it, freedom of speech and expression is a fundamental right that no less a place than the university must respect and guide.

No victimization of any student whatsoever, the protest was organized by students independently of any individual and all students knowing the economic hard times their working-class parents were going through, voluntarily joined, without any coercion from any quarters and conducted themselves peacefully all through.

It is important to also state that students must be commended for positively organizing to call off the bluff of closing down the school on the excuse of a possible false “Security Report”, this early that school was just resuming. If students can recall, last session, the same method of closing the university on such short notice, even when exams were on, during the National Sports Festival, ordering students to vacate the hostels. But this time around students in their organized numbers ensured that this disruption of the academic calendar didn’t come to be.

Interestingly, we are forced to wonder aloud, if the Salami-led administration handed out our hostels for free, and if not, what has happened to this largesse, to even the FG allocation, and the university funds and how they are managed.

Students must insist on an opening up of the accounts for appropriate auditing and accountability of the finances. Flowing from this, they must raise the need for a governing Senate that allows for the elected representatives of all stakeholders in the university, lecturers, non-teaching staff, and students, even from across faculties, including government representatives.

This is the only way by which students and other stakeholders can insist on the allocation of the necessary funds that would tend to their needs and reduce to the barest minimum the question of corruption in the university’s accounts.

TIME FOR INDEPENDENT STUDENT UNIONISM AND ADEQUATE PUBLIC FUNDING OF EDUCATION

Students must also insist on the democratic right of students to have an independent union, free from intervention or intimidation from the school management. As a consequence, the coming SUG election must be free from any form of involvement of the Salami-led school management.

Neither should the student welcome any direct sponsorship of any candidate, as a means of bringing the SUG under her thumb. Our union’s election must be free from any form of interference, for the right of students to elect their student leaders that would place the interest and wellbeing of students first and foremost.

We do not however ignore the fact that the university and indeed the whole education as a sector suffers from underfunding, and that ASUU has raised this over and over and has even been on strikes over it and other issues. But the approach of the university management of the likes of Salami is to turn students and parents, who themselves are victims of an exploitive capitalist system to be the ones that would be made to pay for the failure of their system, as a consequence, further pauperizing the working masses.

Students must know that this question of underfunding cannot be resolved if the working people do not organize nationally to confront the ruling elites, overthrow capitalism and replace it with a working people’s government that would nationalize the commanding sector of the economy, under the democratic management of a workers and poor farmers government. This is the only government that would ensure that all of the public funds to guarantee public education is free and qualitative can be made available.

The MSA states that students in the University of Benin must not sow any illusion in the belief that the removal of one administrator, would end any oppressive rule of a government or a school management. For it is only a question of time, we would back in the same scenario, if capitalism is not brought to an end and replaced with a planned socialist society that puts first the needs of the working people as oppose to the the capitalist system of of profit accumulation and looting of the public treasury by pro-capitalist politicians and looters through the various guise of privatization, deregulation, and commercialization of public amenities and ensuring that the means of production remains undeveloped.

LESSONS AND THE TASK AHEAD

We can draw strength from our victory to inspire the working masses get organized, and with the full support of youth and students, we can collectively bring an end to our suffering and built a new society where all our needs in the area of education, housing, foods, roads, transport, and health, etc. will be met.

The capitalist system is founded on the greed of profit amassing wealth for a tiny few — controlling and managing the means of production. This is what leads the economy into excruciating crises as the wealth of society is transformed into private property in the guise of profit with the brazen looting of the treasury by public officers, and by so doing denying the rest of us the needed funds that would have been invested to meet the needs of the working masses.

The ruling elites in managing the crisis the capitalist system has brought about makes the working masses and students suffer and pay with the non-payment of salaries, the under-funding of public education, inflation, transport, and the high cost of living; deregulation and privatization, etc. and all of the many neo-liberal policies that are anti-student and anti-poor.

This shows that students and youth need to embrace the struggle of the working masses as their, join the MSA, and canvass for the building of a political party of the working masses to fight this capitalist system.

Neither the PDP nor the APC as the 22 years of the fourth republic has demonstrated can be relied upon to bring about any fundamental change. It is only by the revolutionary action, might and united strength of workers and youth that socialism is achieved.

In short, what this victory has provided to students (and the Nigerian working masses) is the constant need to struggle, organize, and fight till a permanent victory is attained. It is only by this that the interest of the students and workers can be guaranteed.