Governor Liyel Imoke of Cross River State and the Vice-Chancellor of University of Calabar, Prof. James Epoke, have condemned last Saturdays’ student’s violent demonstration, describing it as unprecedented in the history of the university.
Students of University of Calabar, over the weekend, went on rampage destroying over 500 cars and vandalising buildings as well as looting valuable equipment worth hundreds of million of naira.
Females students leaving the UNICAl campus
The rampage was said to have been sparked off by an alleged armed robbery attack on one of the students’ hostels at Malabo at about 11:00pm, leading to the death of one of the students. www.naijapaymentonline.com
In their separate reactions in Calabar, the governor and the vice chancelllor said it was absolutely immoral and abuse of privileges for students to wake up and engage in such destruction of school property, which was built to serve their purpose.
Governor Imoke in a statement said, “the destruction is quite extensive and it is across the campus and most unfortunate, whatever the reasons may be; it is unprecedented, this kind of wanton destruction of property of an institution,” adding that “it is really unfortunate and the institution has been shut down for the time being.”
In his own reaction, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. James Epoke, described it as strange, saying “we cannot say there was anything inimical that the administration did that would warrant this kind of reaction.
He said, “yes, students may disagree on one thing or the other but if the disagreement is brought in the way of normal demonstration, then the administration would have looked at it. But for this wanton destruction, it is not that anything went wrong. They just wanted to destroy the place.”
On the allegations that students took to violent demonstration following deadline issued on payment of school fees, Prof. Epoke contended that “every university all over the world gives fees’ deadlines for certain things. There is a date for resumption, date for registration and date for examination. All those things are there. There are deadlines,” he said.
Continuing, the vice-chancellor said, “since this school resumed on January 14 this year, students have been registering and we say that for us to be able to compile list of really registered students and prepare for session exams for them, there should be a deadline and the deadline was given eight and a half months later, which is August 26. There is no school you go and stay for eight and a half months without registering. How do we know that you are a student? How do we prepare for exams for you? I mean, that cannot warrant this kind of destruction. It cannot.”
In an emotion-laden tone, he disclosed that every part of the school was affected including lecturers’ houses, asking rhetorically what they had done to students to warrant that type of treatment.“The worst is that they even went to lecturers’ houses and destroyed their cars. What have the lecturers done to them? So it was just destruction. People just came out to destroy property owned by the university. I cannot quantify monetarily what I have seen. It is terrible.”
Insisting there was no disagreement with students before now, he, however, admitted that “the SUG president had appealed for extension of the August 26 deadline, which the school authourities were considering, especially for those that found it difficult to meet up with the fees, and suddenly they came to destroy the whole university.”
No comments:
Post a Comment