The National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) has expelled its Senate President, Abubakar Gambo Mohammed.
Mohammed was dismissed in the wake of an emergency joint senators (SUG Presidents) and stakeholders Congress of NANS for offences ranging from extortion, engaging in anti-organizational activities, illegal conveying of NANS Senate meeting on zoom platform, sabotage and gross indiscipline.
He was also charged with tampering with and manipulating the NANS constitution and Charter of Demand without recourse to constitutional provisions, a communiqué issued at the end of the meeting stated.
It will be recalled that the organization’s President, Danielson Bamidele Akpan, was impeached earlier in the week by a splinter group of students within the organization, who accused him of high-handedness, fraud, misappropriation and diversion of students COVID-19 palliatives and embezzling $200,000 given to the association by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
The statement dismissing Mohammed from his office further alleged that he joined certain “so- called former leaders” of the association in an “illegal Zoom Senate meeting”. Those former leaders identified in the statement included Ogolo Victory, a former Vice President of NANS in 2005; Haruna Kadiri, former NANS Zone B coordinator in 2006/2007 and factional President in 2017. Furthermore, said the statement, those former NANS leaders, “disgracefully, against the practice, constitution and tradition of NANS, procured with N3m the Senate President, Abubakar Mohammed Gambo, whose official and constitutional duty ended in March, 2020 to do their illegal bidding.
“In their myopic tendencies, they organized a Zoom Senate meeting and shamelessly impersonated legitimate Student Union Government officials and delivered estopically their long awaited evil plan against Nigerian students whom they have been in the business of trading for monetary gains and particularly the South Western zone of NANS whom the Presidency of NANS is due any moment and for which they have sworn to throw into disunity.
According to the statement, “Nigerian students have seen through their evil plots and have since from beginning of their inordinate mission till now sworn never to allow them take the students for a ride. The resolve of the outgoing Danielson Akpan-led administration is to return to the (Zone D) the South-West zone of NANS a united Presidency under which NANS can continue to flourish and serve the interest of Nigerian students with capacitated voice.
“In bringing their ignorance to the fore, at their illegal Zoom Senate meeting, unknown to Nigerian students and conglomerated by non students, the merchants purportedly impeached the performing global President, fruitlessly replacing him with a serving government official (Chidi Iloegbe), a Special Assistant to the governor of Enugu State who has since been suspended after his appointment and subsequent refusal to resign his position, in line with the constitution of NANS which forbids government officials or partisan members from holding executive offices in NANS.
“Knowing that their allegations at the illegal zoom meeting are watery, baseless, malicious and intended to divide the students, it is important to assert that this illegality is of no consequence, unrecognizable, unknown to the constitution of NANS and unacceptable to Nigerian students. The ongoing transition plan to a new leadership is on course and unshakably indestructible. Nigerian students are resolute that never again shall they allow the locusts to throw their cherished organization into disunity.
Mohammed’s expulsion as Senate President of NANS comes only hours after a splinter group within the association announced the expulsion of its incumbent President, Danielson Bamidele Akpan, for various offenses bordering on fraud, misappropriation of funds belonging to the association and other acts of indiscipline.