Southern Kaduna indigenes want varsity, COE re-opened

Southern Kaduna Indigenes, under the umbrella of Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU), have called on Governor Nasir El-Rufai, to order the re-opening of the Kaduna State University (KASU), Kafanchan, and College of Education, Gidan Waya, following the return of peace to the troubled area.

According to them, it has become imperative to speak against the continued, deliberate and unwarranted closure of the institutions, since the reason for their closure was security concerns, especially against the background that all schools in Kafanchan (both public and private), including the School of Nursing, and the Kafanchan campus of the College of Education, have been re-opened and academic activities going on peacefully.

A statement signed by the National Public Relations Officer of SOKAPU, Mr. Yakubu Kuzamani, said any further delay in re-opening the two institutions in the areas would lend credence to the agenda of marginalisation by the state government against the people of Southern Kaduna.

He queried: “On what basis are the two schools still closed? Is there anything being planned that we don’t know about? If nothing is done quickly to open the schools so that thousands of students of the schools continue with their normal academic activities, we would be left with no option, but to deduce that the continued closure is another form of educational genocide, coming after the attempted economic emasculation of the area, through the strange, unnecessary and punitive 24-hour curfew that the governor has been slamming on Jema, Zangon Kataf and Kaura Local Councils at his leisure.

“Why would students in other schools be in session while those of these two schools are at home?  We are, however, not too surprised by what is going on because of the governor’s antecedents.

“This is a Governor who on February 9, 2017 appeared on a Channels TV programme and gleefully relapsed into his favourite pastime-demonising the people of Southern Kaduna.  This governor so loves denigrating the people of the zone, that he overreached himself on that programme by saying that church leaders in Southern Kaduna are fueling the crisis because they are getting foreign dollars to bury Christians and rebuild thousands of burnt churches. This coming from a governor that is expected to personify decorum, statesmanship, impartiality and propriety in public office is, to say the least, difficult to rationalise…”