From Emmanuel Adeyemi, Lokoja
The Coalition of Northern Groups (Students wing ), Kogi State Chapter, has vowed to shut the National Assembly, airports, political party offices and major highways if the Federal Government failed to end strikes by the Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU) and other unions in the nation’s tertiary institutions.
At a press conference at NUJ Press Centre, Lokoja, Adams Ayub, who spoke on behalf of the group, described the recent statement credited to Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, that ASUU’s demands were complex and beyond comprehension as shameless, insensitive and depicts government as not serious in resolving the crisis in federal tertiary institutions. Ayub said if moves employed by the group failed to yield positive results and the universities reopened, they would mobilise students and parents to launch massive protests that would see the shutting down of national and states’ legislative assemblies, political party offices, major highways, airports, seaports and railways stations. He said the protracted closure of universities and colleges of education had exposed children of the poor to violence and exploitation with early marriages, recruitments into militias, sexual exploitation of girls and young women, teenage pregnancies and child labour.
