By Yekini Jimoh in Lokoja
The National President of the National Association of Nigerian Polytechnic Students, Muhammed Eneji has called on the Federal Ministry of Education to provide Nigerian students with a multipurpose uniform identity card.
He said it would enable the students to have access to quality health services, affordable social services around the country through an insurance package that comes with other numerous packages.
He made this known in Lokoja, Kogi State during a joint press conference of the National Association of Polytechnic Students and all SUG presidents of polytechnics, monotechnics and colleges of technologies at the end of the one-day security summit and briefs/demo on Nigerian students uniform identity card project.
According to him, the essentiality of security in the day-to-day human activities and the obvious security threat in the country informed the need to put in place a mechanism to secure the lives and wellbeing of Nigerian students on and off campuses.
He added that it is on record, the series of security challenges confronting Nigerian students within and outside the walls of institutions and the numerous risks of poor roads that link schools and the need to insure students’ precious lives to forestall unforeseen circumstances.
“Poor healthcare is the key challenges facing the students’ community that has claimed the lives of our dear colleagues untimely, having acknowledge and identified the weaknesses and failure of the NHIS/TINSHIP package being run on most of our campuses.
“We have on record numerous institutions that charge students for medical fee and TINSHIP yet the state of their health centres are pitiable with obsolete facilities.
“To forestall the continuous scam of Nigerian students through TINSHIP, promptly arrest circumstances capable of throwing the students’ families into grief and to stand up to tackle security and health challenges confronting our students, the leadership of NAPS in conjunction with all students’ union governments of polytechnics hereby adopt an alternative to secure the lives and wellbeing of the students.
“Having digested the proposals of the Qcuboyds Limited to provide Nigerian students with a multipurpose uniform identity card with which the students can access quality health services, affordable social services around the country through an insurance package that come with other numerous packages, we implore the Federal Ministry of Education, Health, NBTE, security to give it necessary backing to be implemented,” he stated.
Also speaking, the former Senate President, Salaudeen Lukman issued a seven day ultimatum for the crisis rocking research institutions across the country.
He said students are tired of the lingering crisis which kept them away from their academic environment for some time and are therefore prepared to embark on drastic action including mass protest to the supervising Ministry of Science and Technology.
The students’ body also warned the Oyo State government against what it termed “commercialisation of education†by way of arbitrary increase in the fees payable by students in the Polytechnic, Ibadan and other institutions in the state.
He also appealed to the federal government to extend TETFund to all polytechnics, monothecnics and other colleges of technologies.
