By Rotimi Akinola
Home calls: Female UNILAG students scale the main gate.
The showdown begins…but there are not soldiers in sight.
The police have teargassed University of Lagos (UNILAG) students who are refusing to leave the school after authorities suspended academic activities.
The teargassing happened at the school’s main gate. The police had accessed the school via its back gate after students shut the main entrance.
‘I threw my luggage over a fence and scaled it myself,’ a female student told NewsroomNG on Friday.
UNILAG had given the students till 10am to leave. Police had accessed the school before then but waited till the appointed time to unleash ‘terror’ on the students.
Students had staged a two-day protest over the failing water and electricity supply. UNILAG said they won’t take a decision to reopen the school till those issues are fixed.
They asked the students to leave. The students refused. Students had mounted roadblocks in preparation for the showdown.
UNILAG Press Club condemned the school and the police for what’s playing out:
It is now evident that UNILAG management has amounted to dealing with students through the discharge of security personnel within the campus arena, and this is a show of Beasts in a democratic space,”’the club said.
Let someone tell the VC, DSA and other management officials, that the entire Students condemn this act, and as such, no going back on our stand and we’re going nowhere.
The Nigerian space should ask the VC and management, what it takes to address the students in just 5 minutes.
It is advisable that Students should remain calm in their various halls.
Yes, the students are staying put.
But many already left with some having to scale fences to exit the school.
We gathered some are, however, returning from the main gate to their hostels daring the police to come drag them out.
This post first appeared on NEWSROOM
