Governor
Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State has called for the establishment of
a panel to probe the riot that erupted in the University Of Uyo
(UNIUYO), resulting in property damage of millions of Naira, so as to
bring the culprits to book.
On Wednesday, students of
the Department of Engineering staged a demonstration to the Office of
the
Vice-Chancellor to protest the hike in the transport fare from the
institution's town campus to the permanent campus. The peaceful protest
however turned awry: two students were reported to have been killed;
the offices of the Vice Chancellor and the Deputy Vice Chancellor were
torched; and several cars and the security post were vandalised.
The
worst hit was the university's Examinations and Records Department,
which was set ablaze. The department maintains academic records,
especially the transcripts of students who graduated from the defunct
College of Education, Uyo; the defunct University of Cross River State;
the present University of Uyo; and the Unified Matriculation Tertiary
Examination.
The governor, who was conducted round the scene of
the incident on Thursday by the Vice Chancellor of the university,
Professor Comfort Ekpo, in the company of Deputy Vice Chancellors Paul
Ekwere and Okon Ansa, described the riot as criminal, targeted and
pre-meditated.
He said that the miscreants took undue advantage
of the disagreement at the institution, and that the students targeted
the destruction of the school's academic records and policies, saying
that it was a pre-planned arrangement by the miscreants who pretended to
be students of the institution.
"This act is a disaster,” Chief
Akpabio declared. “My observation here is that the destruction of the
buildings was targeted at the 20-year-old school records and examination
results. It was a pre-planned arrangement by miscreants who are
professional “students” using the opportunity of the peaceful protest to
raze down buildings where the school's academic records were kept."
Akpabio
called on the Nigerian police to carry out a thorough investigation
into the case, and suggested the involvement of President Goodluck
Jonathan, who is the Visitor, as well as the Minister of Education, in
getting to the root cause of the matter.
The governor expressed
his sympathies with the institution over the sad incident, and pledged
the state government’s readiness to build and hand over two hostels to
the university as soon as the institution allocates a site for the
project.
In her remarks, Professor Ekpo explained how the
institution had decided on the increase of the transport fare from N100
to N200 from the town campus to the permanent campus after the students.
The
President of the Students' Union Government, Lucky Imo Inyang and the
Vice President of National Association of Nigerian Students, Comrade
Ubon Marcus, expressed their regrets about the incident, blaming it on
miscreants who hijacked the peaceful demonstration by the students
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