NO fewer than 3,000 students of Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, staged a peaceful protest on Thursday after eight students slumped while struggling to enter examination hall.
Although the incident happened on Wednesday, there is no official confirmation whether any of the eight students died.
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But students who trooped out in their thousands blocked the popular Abakaliki-Enugu highway for hours thereby obstructing movement of vehicles along the highway.
At the moment, armed police security men and soldiers were present at the scene so as to clam the angry students.
How it happened
The stampede occurred as students rushed to access the school’s ICT centre which was slated as venue for the examination.
A student, Sunday Nwite, told Daily Trust that the University had adopted the Computer Based Test (CBT) for some General Studies Program (GST) courses examination.
Mostly, GST are courses undertaken by all students of the institution irrespective of their departments.
Nwite said the hall was too small for the mammoth crowd of students that were to write the course, adding that there was poor planning by the school management.
“There was poor planning of the exams. The hall had just about 500 computers and the students to write the exams were over 1000.”
“The University administration should have staggered the exams so that the hall will not be crowded but they failed to do so.
“Today’s exams has again exposed the sorry state of our state University. Many students did not take part in the examination and only 15% of EBSU students wrote the exam.
“Knowing fully well that a one- room apartment, which was paraded as ICT centre cannot accommodate all the students of the institution to write GST 101 and 102.”
“They should have typed this exams and make photocopies so as to get to all the students but did not because they paraded the exam to be a computer based one.”
Also, the management same Wednesday at about 4:15 pm cancelled the examination which has been written Midway by some students, Daily Trust gathered.
SUG expresses regret
Reacting to the incident, the SUG President Abanni Samson, expressed deep regrets at the incident which he described as totally avoidable
“As leaders and firstly students, the SUG share in the pain of all EBSU students and on this note we assure everyone that never again will EBSU students under our leadership made to go through such horror in the name of writing any exam or undertaking any academic activity including experiences with the consultancy unit of the university”.
“The planning could have been better, to prevent the mayhem that was recorded today. I am personally sorry for all who got hurt in any way.”
He implored the students to remain calm until confirmation is made over the rumour. Abanni said the SUG will be meeting with the GST management on Thursday to ensure that a repeat does not occur.
When contacted the Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof Chigozie Ogbu told Journalists to speak to those on ground.
However, Daily Trust observed that there was no Medical centre in the institution since it’s 23 years of existence.
