The concept of “town and gown”—the seamless integration of the University of Jos into the Naraguta community, was once a blueprint for communal harmony.

However, recent unrest in Jos North has seen this integration weaponized by a political class that favors the optics of rescue over the substance of protection. When street boys, Almajiri and opportunistic actors began to harass the fringes of the campus, the immediate reaction from the political elite was not to bolster the existing security architecture or empower the police and Civil Defense units stationed nearby. Instead, they orchestrated a “messianic” evacuation.

This strategic retreat turned a manageable security challenge into a televised humanitarian crisis, effectively signaling that a population of nearly 40,000 students could be displaced by a disorganized few.

This “politics of evacuation” reveals a cynical lacuna in governance: it is far more politically profitable to play the role of the savior than the role of the protector. One will be forced to ask, what is the primary responsibility of Government?

Interestingly, some of the these political actors, busing students out of their hostels and housing them in private residences, politicians cultivate a narrative of personal benevolence while conveniently sidestepping their failure to secure a multi-million naira state asset.

This creates a dangerous false narrative that the University is an indefensible fortress rather than a resilient center of learning. For University of Jos since the 2001 Jos conflict, many students have paid the ultimate price but there has not been any effort in concrete terms by the same office seekers to protect the institution, rather they come to achieve cheap political points as saviour of students in dare need of rescue.

The fact that many students remained in their hostels, even after the evacuation, continuing their lives quietly amidst the noise of the “rescue,” exposes the evacuation as a performative gesture designed to score points rather than a calculated response to an existential threat.

See picture of students currently in the hostel: SUG provided relief materials i.e food items to the students left behind. Over 500 students across the hostels alone

The long-term cost of this political theatre is the erosion of institutional permanence. Each time evacuation is chosen over defense, the bond between the university and its host community is severed further, and the “monopoly of violence” held by the state is revealed to be hollow. The Jos North LG authority failed, the Security failed, Plateau state Government Failed and the Nigerian Government failed. Evacuation is no solution of an existential challenge, no place is safe in Nigeria, traveling with these students in mass is more dangerous than protecting them in a space.

For the University of Jos and Plateau State Polytechnic to survive future tensions, the focus must shift from the logistics of flight to the mechanics of fortification. If the political class continues to prioritize the short-term visibility of a “rescue mission” over the long-term stability of the campus, they risk turning these institutions into nomadic schools, forever at the mercy of the next minor skirmish.

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UNIJOS: Politics of evacuating students… Whose interest?