The management of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, on Thursday denied claims that two students were arrested for protesting the presence of the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, on the campus.
Reports indicate that Wike was delivering the Distinguished Personality Lecture at the university’s Oduduwa Hall on the topic, “Nigeria of Our Dreams.”
It was, however, gathered that the two students, Oladepo Joshua and Ejike Kelechi, raised placards inside the hall calling out the minister to “compensate those that you demolished their houses.”
In a video seen by our correspondent, the duo was subsequently whisked out of the hall by security officials while the minister was speaking.
Multiple sources on the campus told newsmen that the students were taken to the security base of the institution known as ‘Floor 0’ in the Senate Building of the school.
“They were in Oduduwa Hall for the event Wike came for. We presently don’t know their whereabouts,” a student who gave her name simply as Gift for fear of victimisation, said.
“I’m just getting to Floor 0. They were taken to Floor 0 together with security details attached to Wike. They wanted to take them away. But I learnt security operatives appealed to Wike’s security officials not to take them away,” another source said.
When contacted, the university’s Public Relations Officer, Abiodun Olarewaju, said that while everyone had the right to protest, the minority should not disrupt what the majority was enjoying.
“Everybody has a right to protest, and the minority, microscopic minorities, should not disrupt what the overwhelming majority allows.
“So, they were not arrested; they were only escorted out of the Oduduwa Hall. We didn’t want the situation to escalate, because some of their colleagues were the ones who accosted them.
“You know, when about 20 students descended on two students, something could happen. So, the security operatives there just apprehended the two students, took them out of the hall,” the PRO said in a telephone interview on Thursday.
Olarewaju, who anchored the programme, added that all he knew was that they (security officials) “rescued them (the students) from being beaten by their colleagues.”
“I mean, how can just two students, only two students, decide to disrupt what other students said they like? So, so that their colleagues will not beat them, or injure them, or do anything untoward, that was why our security personnel just took them out of the hall,” he added.
A group, the Alliance of Nigerian Students Against Neoliberal Attacks, has protested the students’ “arrest” and demanded their release.
“We demand the immediate and unconditional release of our comrades. We urge the Nigerian public, the Great Ife Students’ Union, the Academic Staff Union of Universities, other progressive unions, civil society groups, the media, and all defenders of justice to rise in condemnation of this repression,” ANSA’s Deputy National Coordinator, Ikechukwu John, said in a statement.
The Education Rights Campaign’s National Mobilisation Officer, Adaramoye Michael, also said “the arrest of these two student activists is condemnable, and it shows the despotism obtainable in tertiary institutions today.
The Students’ Union at the university said it had yet to get full details of the incident.
“As of this time, I just heard rumours. At this particular event, I was not in attendance, and I don’t have any detailed report yet,” the union’s spokesperson, Aka Daniel, said in a chat with newsmen.
The Punch
