The Federal Government is cracking down on student involvement in kidnapping, with Education Minister Dr. Tunji Alausa directing vice-chancellors, rectors, and provosts nationwide to dismiss any student found, after due investigation, to have taken part in or aided abductions.
The directive, delivered on Tuesday during a closed-door meeting at the minister’s office in Abuja, was addressed specifically to the pro- chancellor, governing council, and management of the Federal University of Lafia (FULafia), Nasarawa State.
The university delegation was led by its pro-chancellor, Hon. Lola Fibisola Akande, and the session reportedly stretched nearly two hours, touching on campus security, infrastructure gaps, and welfare concerns.
The meeting comes against a troubling backdrop. Twice in recent months, gunmen have struck FULafia students at off-campus lodges on the fringes of the institution’s Lafia campus: first in July, when three students were abducted from Living Seed Lodge, with one later rescued by police while efforts continued to free the others, and again days ago, when three more undergraduates were reportedly seized from Sure Leaders Lodge in the Bukan Kwato area.
Both incidents have unsettled the university community and thrust the question of off-campus safety to the top of the ministry’s agenda.
It was against this backdrop that Alausa struck a tone of zero tolerance. “We have a collective responsibility to protect every Nigerian child, from primary school to tertiary education,” he said. “While our campuses remain safe, we must continue to strengthen intelligence gathering and work closely with our security agencies to ensure that students are protected both within and outside our institutions.”
The minister was unambiguous about the consequences awaiting any student found complicit. “If you tolerate bad behavior for too long, it becomes a culture,” he warned. “Any student found culpable, after due investigation, of planning or participating in the kidnapping of fellow students has no place in our tertiary institutions. Such individuals must be dismissed.”
Beyond discipline, Alausa instructed institutional heads to overhaul internal security architecture, sharpening intelligence-gathering capacity on campuses and deepening cooperation with the Department of State Services and other security agencies, particularly given that many attacks, including those at FULafia, have targeted students in private, off-campus accommodation rather than on university grounds.
On the contentious question of ransom payments, the minister reaffirmed the government’s unyielding stance, in line with President Tinubu’s directive that no government institution should negotiate with or pay kidnappers, arguing that capitulating to criminal demands would only embolden further attacks and undercut the broader national fight against insecurity.
To back the directive with resources, Alausa announced that the Tertiary Education Trust Fund’s 2027 intervention program would fund security upgrades including perimeter fencing across eligible institutions, and urged universities to submit proposals promptly.
He also confirmed that the Energising Education Programme, run jointly with the Federal Ministry of Power, would be scaled up to expand solar generation and battery storage capacity on campuses grappling with unreliable electricity.
For her part, Pro-Chancellor Akande used the platform to lay bare FULafia’s vulnerabilities, disclosing that some of the university’s own students are suspected of links to the off-campus kidnapping incidents, and citing overstretched hostel accommodation, erratic power supply and broader insecurity around the institution as compounding challenges.
Vice-Chancellor Prof. Mohammed Isa Kida commended the minister’s reform drive and appealed for the Energizing Education Programme to be extended to the university’s second campus, alongside requests for additional office space and staffing.
Alausa, in response, advised the university to formally channel its requests through the relevant intervention windows, assuring the Governing Council that the ministry would give them due consideration.
The directive marks one of the clearest statements yet from Abuja that campus insecurity, increasingly a story of students attacked in unregulated off-campus housing rather than within university gates, will now be met with both disciplinary force and targeted federal investment.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
The Federal Government has drawn a firm line on campus insecurity: any student proven complicit in kidnapping will be dismissed, no ransom will be paid to abductors, and universities must tighten intelligence and security cooperation, especially for students living off-campus, where recent attacks like those at FULafia have actually occurred.
