Secret Reporters No place to hide
Secret Reporters
Over twenty (20) Students would face a Student disciplinary panel in Adekunle Ajasin University, an Ondo State owned Institution over a protest that later became Violent on April 9 and 10 2016. The Protest was a response to the death of a Student named Ojo Afolabi, a 200 level Economics Student who died via a Road accident.
These Students are already on indefinite suspension and also had their names announced on the State owned Orange Fm as cultists and also accused of vandalizing school properties. This was after the School had imposed a N25,000 reparation fee on all Student’s and later reduced it to N15,000 when the public outcry became embarrassing for both the School Management led by Amos Ajibefun and the Ondo State Government.
By imposing N15,000 on almost N16,000 students who occupy the School, the school realised about Two hundred and seventy five million Naira when it was clear that properties destroyed where not worth twenty million naira. Not satisfied by this, the Management went ahead to suspend indefinitely twenty students alleged to be part of the protest without inviting them to any panel for fair hearing stated a source told Secret Reporters.
Authoritative insiders who spoke to us revealed that some of these Students suspended were not even part of those who participated in the protest. Their offence was simply that they wrote some critical articles against the school’s decision to impose a sum of twenty five thousand Naira on students when it didn’t commensurate with actual damages.
Some of the suspended students were simply tagged in facebook posts. An example of this is a Student who is among the leading Student in his Department academically but was tagged to posts on facebook and got suspended. Another case of Femi Adebayo, the AAUA chapter President of the National Association of Akure Students who released a statement online promising to protest if the N25,000 reparation fee remained the Status Quo was also suspended.
Surprisingly, No Member of the leadership of the Student Union was Suspended even though it was evident that the President Odunyemi Adegbola, Secetary General- Segun Odunayo were also involved in the Student’s Protest. It is rumoured that it was the Student’s Union leadership who handpicked some of Students and forwarded their names to the Management for persecution.
Sources revealed that a top member of the Student’s Representative Council actually sent a long list of names to the Vice Chancellor for Persecution. To worsen it, the Student Union Leadership has shown no concern towards their plight, rather than call a Congress of Students to decide on measures on the issue and begin Mobilising Student’s to resist this draconian policies; it is currently planning a trip to Abuja to sight see despite the issues on Campus.
Unfortunately, the suspended Students were disallowed from writing the first semester examinations despite the fact that at that time up till now, they have not been proven guilty by an Disciplinary Panel, which means that whatever the outcome of the panel, the Students have missed an academic session.
As at the time of filing this report, members of Staff in AAUA have not been paid, while the Academic Staff Union is threatening to go on strike for unpaid arrears. The Non Academic Staff have no Union as their Union was dismantled via the tyrannical reign of former Vice Chancellor Olufemi Mimiko, the younger brother to the Governor who sacked the leadership of NASU for daring to protest for their hazard allowance in 2012, thus even with over three months arrears of Salaries the Non Academic Staff cannot go on Industrial Action. Even with the Funds accrued to the University through imposition of different means; the University is still suffering from bad infrastructure, shortage of lecture theatres, bad health care facilities. The laboratories have no good equipments, infact the Management had to borrow equipment to pass the routine NUC accreditation done recently.
