The University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) was literarily
turned into a war zone recently as some undergraduates of the university
locked horns with the post-graduate students, holding the institution
hostage for two days.
It took the intervention of some soldiers to quell the crisis, after the aggrieved students reportedly over-powered the policemen earlier sent to save the situation.
In fact, but for the intervention, the two-day protest, in which two students were said to have sustained serious injuries from alleged beating by the post-graduate students, would have sent many heads rolling.
Crisis erupted earlier at the beginning of the academic session when the school authority, through the Dean of Students Affairs, Prof. Okpan Oyeoku, directed the former occupants of Mbanefo Hostel, who were awaiting allocation to evacuate the hostel on the ground that the hostel needed to be renovated. The school authority, as a result, did not approve the use of the hostel for the session.
However, this did not go down well with the students who, according to sources, had wanted to pay the hostel fee but couldn’t do so as the hostel was not allocated. They had, against school order, stayed back in the hostel, even as more students packed into the hostel.
After sometime, the school authority ordered the Mbanefo Hostel occupants to leave the hostel so that renovation could commence. At some point, the security men were seen around the hostel. “Our beds were seized at various times although they didn’t chase us out of the place’’, said one of the students who pleaded for anonymity. The situation continued in that manner till recently when the school authority, under the administration of the new Vice-chancellor, Prof Benjamin Ozumba, maintained that students should leave the hostel. The directive, dated July 16, stated that the students should leave to allow the Sandwich students to use the facility. The vacation order created panic among the students, prompting some of them to hurriedly pack their belongings and left while others defied the order and stayed.
The remaining students reportedly had series of meetings within the hostel to decide on their fate, though each meeting was said to have ended as the previous ones, with the same decision of staying back unless the school provided them with alternative accommodation.
A student, who pleaded for anonymity, said that the students’ grouse was that the hostel, which was denied them us on the ground that it was about to collapse, was the same one which they wanted to allocate to the Sandwich students. “We have been living in hell here’’, one of the students told this reporter, adding that “most of us staying in this hostel now have no beds with which to sleep on.’’
In one of the meetings which they had with the President of the institution’s Students Union Government, SUG, Christian Agu, the latter reportedly told the students not to leave the hostel yet as attempts were being made to convince the Dean of Students Affairs to allow them stay till the end of the semester.
Sadly, the bubble burst on Friday, July 18 when the school authority disconnected the hostel from electrical power supply from the school generating set during the night. As a result of this, the students were said to have protested the blackout around 8pm the following day, insisting that “it is either they give us light or they disconnect other hostels from the light.’’
Following the protest, the generating set was switched off. This, however, was said to have triggered fresh protests from students from the two other male hostels – Alvan Ikoku and Eni Njoku. They were said to have protested round the Franco Complex and then headed to the school after the Postgraduate students refused to join the protest.
Violence started when the students were returning to their hostels having succeeded in restoring light to their hostels. The sight of light at the PG Hall infuriated other students, who marched into the post-graduate hostel to express their disappointment at the ‘uncooperative’ conduct of the PG students. In a sharp twist of events, one of the students was seized and beaten up by the PG students. His fellow undergraduate students retaliated by hauling stones at the PG hostel, and causing extensive damages to the building and cars parked outside. The clash resulted in some of the undergraduates sustaining various degrees of injury. Two students were reported hospitalized after the duel.
As if the initial violence was not enough, the undergraduates had, after the Sunday morning service within the Franco Complex, continued to air their grievances; they came out in their numbers and laid ambush in front of Odili Hostel from where they unleashed a hail of stones at the hostel.
“They were in our hostel for over three hours. Most of us couldn’t even go to the church that morning because it was risky considering the way they were throwing stones at us the previous night,’’ claimed a post-graduate student.
On why they have continued to lay siege in front of the hostel after the previous night’s confrontation, one of the outraged students, Iyke, alleged that “for them to have beaten one of us to stupor is the height of cruelty and we are not leaving this place unless they apologize.”
Besides this, their action also seemed to stem from bottled-up grievance as the undergraduates also claimed that the postgraduate students have always maltreated them. “If an undergraduate enters their hostel to watch football or even for any other reason, they will just beat up the person. If you pass through the short-cut that is besides their hostel to the gate, they will block your way and tell you to go back and follow the main route,’’ one of the students told our reporter.
“How can they be treating us as if we are secondary school students? Why won’t they join us to protest for the good of all students? It is disheartening that the PG students who are supposed to be the ones voicing out the ill treatment and poor conditions students are subjected to in Franco Complex are the ones feeling unconcerned. It is high time they realized that we all are students and should speak with one voice without any sort of discrimination,’ another aggrieved student added.
Among the things destroyed were cars parked in front of Odili Hostel, some hostel louvres, the hostel gate and also barbed wire used in fencing the hostel. Not even the plea of some of school officials, such as the outgoing Dean of Student Affairs, Prof. Oyeoku, the Chief Security Officer of the university and other security officers could not convince the students to leave the scene. The police had reportedly arrived at the scene to broker peace between the warring parties but their efforts were repelled by the undergraduates’ hail of stones.
Peace was, however, restored when some soldiers led by the Police Area Commander, ACP Ros-Amson Musa Haladu arrived at the scene and calmed down the outraged students. While addressing them, ACP Haladu warned that engaging in such violent protest would not solve the problem. He also promised the students who claimed that they were being maltreated by the post-graduate students, to ensure thorough investigations into the matter and bring defaulters to book.
Prof. Oyeoku, expressed sadness over the conduct of the students, noting that the occupants of Mbanefo hostel are staying there against the school directive, even as he alleged that most of them were not students of the university.
“The university is the oldest indigenous university in the country, and it still has many halls of residence for the students, otherwise because of the age of this university, it does not owe anybody any hostel,” he explained. “Usually, schools will provide you with all the necessary facilities you need for your studies but you can find an accommodation outside the university. But here, we provide the hostels only for the number of people that we can accommodate. Also, some of these hostels have been there for so long that they need to be renovated, amongst which is Mbanefo Hostel.
“So, we have already started the renovation of some of the hostels, but Mbanefo is yet to be worked on and it poses a death trap to the students because of its very bad nature. So, I as the Dean of Student Affairs insisted that we renovate it. So, because of that, we didn’t allocate the place to any student for this academic session. We did so to impress on the university the urgency of the situation and the need for the renovation,” he explained.
He further stated that the students have no reason to be in Mbanefo hostel because there were bed spaces still left in other male hostels, adding that “this implies that those students there don’t want to pay the hostel fee but they want to have accommodation and other facilities which other students have.”
On the clash between some of the undergraduates and the post-graduate students, he stated that the undergraduates, at the first instance, had no reason to move into the post-graduate hostel. He expressed optimism that such incidence would not occur again as the university authority has taken necessary measures to forestall its recurrence.
It took the intervention of some soldiers to quell the crisis, after the aggrieved students reportedly over-powered the policemen earlier sent to save the situation.
In fact, but for the intervention, the two-day protest, in which two students were said to have sustained serious injuries from alleged beating by the post-graduate students, would have sent many heads rolling.
Crisis erupted earlier at the beginning of the academic session when the school authority, through the Dean of Students Affairs, Prof. Okpan Oyeoku, directed the former occupants of Mbanefo Hostel, who were awaiting allocation to evacuate the hostel on the ground that the hostel needed to be renovated. The school authority, as a result, did not approve the use of the hostel for the session.
However, this did not go down well with the students who, according to sources, had wanted to pay the hostel fee but couldn’t do so as the hostel was not allocated. They had, against school order, stayed back in the hostel, even as more students packed into the hostel.
After sometime, the school authority ordered the Mbanefo Hostel occupants to leave the hostel so that renovation could commence. At some point, the security men were seen around the hostel. “Our beds were seized at various times although they didn’t chase us out of the place’’, said one of the students who pleaded for anonymity. The situation continued in that manner till recently when the school authority, under the administration of the new Vice-chancellor, Prof Benjamin Ozumba, maintained that students should leave the hostel. The directive, dated July 16, stated that the students should leave to allow the Sandwich students to use the facility. The vacation order created panic among the students, prompting some of them to hurriedly pack their belongings and left while others defied the order and stayed.
The remaining students reportedly had series of meetings within the hostel to decide on their fate, though each meeting was said to have ended as the previous ones, with the same decision of staying back unless the school provided them with alternative accommodation.
A student, who pleaded for anonymity, said that the students’ grouse was that the hostel, which was denied them us on the ground that it was about to collapse, was the same one which they wanted to allocate to the Sandwich students. “We have been living in hell here’’, one of the students told this reporter, adding that “most of us staying in this hostel now have no beds with which to sleep on.’’
In one of the meetings which they had with the President of the institution’s Students Union Government, SUG, Christian Agu, the latter reportedly told the students not to leave the hostel yet as attempts were being made to convince the Dean of Students Affairs to allow them stay till the end of the semester.
Sadly, the bubble burst on Friday, July 18 when the school authority disconnected the hostel from electrical power supply from the school generating set during the night. As a result of this, the students were said to have protested the blackout around 8pm the following day, insisting that “it is either they give us light or they disconnect other hostels from the light.’’
Following the protest, the generating set was switched off. This, however, was said to have triggered fresh protests from students from the two other male hostels – Alvan Ikoku and Eni Njoku. They were said to have protested round the Franco Complex and then headed to the school after the Postgraduate students refused to join the protest.
Violence started when the students were returning to their hostels having succeeded in restoring light to their hostels. The sight of light at the PG Hall infuriated other students, who marched into the post-graduate hostel to express their disappointment at the ‘uncooperative’ conduct of the PG students. In a sharp twist of events, one of the students was seized and beaten up by the PG students. His fellow undergraduate students retaliated by hauling stones at the PG hostel, and causing extensive damages to the building and cars parked outside. The clash resulted in some of the undergraduates sustaining various degrees of injury. Two students were reported hospitalized after the duel.
As if the initial violence was not enough, the undergraduates had, after the Sunday morning service within the Franco Complex, continued to air their grievances; they came out in their numbers and laid ambush in front of Odili Hostel from where they unleashed a hail of stones at the hostel.
“They were in our hostel for over three hours. Most of us couldn’t even go to the church that morning because it was risky considering the way they were throwing stones at us the previous night,’’ claimed a post-graduate student.
On why they have continued to lay siege in front of the hostel after the previous night’s confrontation, one of the outraged students, Iyke, alleged that “for them to have beaten one of us to stupor is the height of cruelty and we are not leaving this place unless they apologize.”
Besides this, their action also seemed to stem from bottled-up grievance as the undergraduates also claimed that the postgraduate students have always maltreated them. “If an undergraduate enters their hostel to watch football or even for any other reason, they will just beat up the person. If you pass through the short-cut that is besides their hostel to the gate, they will block your way and tell you to go back and follow the main route,’’ one of the students told our reporter.
“How can they be treating us as if we are secondary school students? Why won’t they join us to protest for the good of all students? It is disheartening that the PG students who are supposed to be the ones voicing out the ill treatment and poor conditions students are subjected to in Franco Complex are the ones feeling unconcerned. It is high time they realized that we all are students and should speak with one voice without any sort of discrimination,’ another aggrieved student added.
Among the things destroyed were cars parked in front of Odili Hostel, some hostel louvres, the hostel gate and also barbed wire used in fencing the hostel. Not even the plea of some of school officials, such as the outgoing Dean of Student Affairs, Prof. Oyeoku, the Chief Security Officer of the university and other security officers could not convince the students to leave the scene. The police had reportedly arrived at the scene to broker peace between the warring parties but their efforts were repelled by the undergraduates’ hail of stones.
Peace was, however, restored when some soldiers led by the Police Area Commander, ACP Ros-Amson Musa Haladu arrived at the scene and calmed down the outraged students. While addressing them, ACP Haladu warned that engaging in such violent protest would not solve the problem. He also promised the students who claimed that they were being maltreated by the post-graduate students, to ensure thorough investigations into the matter and bring defaulters to book.
Prof. Oyeoku, expressed sadness over the conduct of the students, noting that the occupants of Mbanefo hostel are staying there against the school directive, even as he alleged that most of them were not students of the university.
“The university is the oldest indigenous university in the country, and it still has many halls of residence for the students, otherwise because of the age of this university, it does not owe anybody any hostel,” he explained. “Usually, schools will provide you with all the necessary facilities you need for your studies but you can find an accommodation outside the university. But here, we provide the hostels only for the number of people that we can accommodate. Also, some of these hostels have been there for so long that they need to be renovated, amongst which is Mbanefo Hostel.
“So, we have already started the renovation of some of the hostels, but Mbanefo is yet to be worked on and it poses a death trap to the students because of its very bad nature. So, I as the Dean of Student Affairs insisted that we renovate it. So, because of that, we didn’t allocate the place to any student for this academic session. We did so to impress on the university the urgency of the situation and the need for the renovation,” he explained.
He further stated that the students have no reason to be in Mbanefo hostel because there were bed spaces still left in other male hostels, adding that “this implies that those students there don’t want to pay the hostel fee but they want to have accommodation and other facilities which other students have.”
On the clash between some of the undergraduates and the post-graduate students, he stated that the undergraduates, at the first instance, had no reason to move into the post-graduate hostel. He expressed optimism that such incidence would not occur again as the university authority has taken necessary measures to forestall its recurrence.
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