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Shot Ekiti Students

Daily Champion (Lagos)
NEWS
March 22, 2004
Posted to the web March 22, 2004
Lagos

THE reported killing by the police, this month, of no fewer than six students of the College of Education, Ikere Ekiti, in Ekiti State, is inexcusable on any grounds. The felled students and their colleagues were protesting speculated proposal for replacement of the acting provost of their college by a lecturer from the University of Ado Ekiti.

The trouble was said to have started when the deputy governor of the state, Mr. Abiodun Aluko, visited the college for unrelated matters, and the students showed hostility to him. That was the beginning of disorder on the campus. To restore calm and peace to the institution, the Ekiti State government shut down the college and ordered its students to vacate the campus. Apparently to enforce the order, a lorry load of mobile policemen was drafted to the college. The students responded by hurling stones at the police, who countercharged by firing at the rioting students, killing six and wounding many more, out of whom four later died in hospitals.

For similar senseless killings in the past, the police had pleaded "accidental discharge", "self-defence", "faulty aiming", or similar flimsy excuses. On the slippery grounds, the police had in the past killed motorists for refusing to offer routine bribes, and workers protesting against arbitrary increases in fuel prices, and even persons in police custody, and so on. None of these excuses should be the justification for the massacre of the students.

Even if, as reported, the rioting students threw stones at the police, the appropriate response should not be the opening of fire on the students by the police. The level of provocation was not enough for the police sent to the college to maintain peace to transform into murderous squad, and fire deliberately at the bunch of protesters. The manner of handling of the crisis by the police questions once more the suitability, educationally, mentally and physically of persons recruited into the Nigeria Police, and the adequacy of their training, particularly in the handling of fire arms and riot control.

But the students must be held culpable, too, for being victims of their youthful exuberance and miscalculation. The cause of their rioting was rooted in speculation. Nobody has been chosen as the substantive provost of the college. The Ekiti State government insists that none of the nine candidates interviewed for the job has been selected or appointed. If so, the students' grouse was non-existent.

Even so, there is the reported suspicion that certain politicians in the state instigated the riot by selling false information of the appointment of the provost to the students. By so doing, the politicians have politicalised a purely academic issue and capitalised on it in an attempt to settle political or personal scores. The tragic consequences of such mischief are immeasurable. Moreso, in Ekiti State that has in recent months become a hot-bed of inter-party feuds.

But the politicians' evil is not peculiar to Ekiti. Across the country politicians mastermind students' riots and hire students for dubious political purposes. In this respect again, students should be blamed for allowing themselves to be malleable instruments in the hands of politicians, particularly for mischievous and doubtful purposes. Additionally, students, or any group of people for that mutter, should shun violent protests.

Sometimes violence begets violence, even if wrongly. Pricked by the initial killing of their six colleagues, the protesting students of the college of Education, Ekiti, had invaded and vandalised the Peoples Democratic Party Secretariat in the area. That assault was avoidable and unnecessary, as it provoked more killings by the police.

The ultimate solution to the crisis does not lie in shutting down the college and sending its students home and stationing police to guard the institution. These are only preliminary and temporary measures. Not even the appointment of the choice of the students as their provost will finally resolve the matter. A mandatory legal step should be swiftly taken to investigate and ascertain the instigators of the riot and the killers of the students. They should be speedily prosecuted, and if found guilty, punished accordingly. It will be the sure way to calm the nerves of the bereaved, and possibly restore the public's confidence in police's discharge of their constitutional duty of protecting lives and property.

Yet, to avoid similar disaster in future, all persons who contributed in one way or the other, to the violence that engulfed the college of Education should assess the immensity of its destruction to ascertain the enormity of their atrocity.

 
 

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