Monday morning, medical students
of the University of Abuja blocked entrance to the school, protesting
stalled medical programmes at Uniabuja without accreditation.
The students demanded to be transferred to other universities,
complaining they were tired of the school authorities “lying to us,
deceiving us, wasting our productive years.”
They have also demanded that the university pay each medical student N10
million each in compensation for the “torture” of attending school for
nearly a decade without accreditation.
The peaceful protest prompted the cancellation of examinations set for thousands of distance-learning students.
Early on, the students were met with heavy campus security intent on
forcing open the school gates, which the protesters had sealed. Students
claim security forced the gates open and threw stones at them, with one
insisting one of the security officers ‘used a knife’ on him.
Security “broke down the lock we kept on the gate, they started
stoning,” he said. “We were on our own. I was sitting in front of the
gate. All of a sudden something came on [my back]. I turned back to see
what happened, then I saw a cutlass.”
Officials insist school authorities could not have ordered heavy and armed crackdown on protesting students.
Tortured
Moves to accredit medical sciences at University of Abuja have been
stalled for long, and students say they cannot afford to keep waiting
indefinitely.
“People who were still in secondary school when we started medical
school have already graduated, but look at us,” lamented Uchenna. “We
just want to be transferred to other schools. Let’s start out lives.”
Their justification for a N10 million compensation comes from how much
money they have committed to studies for the past eight years — yearly
tuition, off-campus accommodation costing up to N200,000 per year.
“It was never our fault. It was in JAMB brochure we applied for medicine at University of Abuja,” said Uchenna.
Among placards on display, one read: “8 years and still in 300 level”
Without MBBS exams since 2005, the medical students — more than 100 of them so far — have never officially reached their fourth year of medical study.
“Most of our students have been at home for the past five years. It is
an infringement on our right to education. All the final-year students
in this school met me in this school. For how long will this
continue?” asks one student. “I will only leave this school when they
gave me transfer, and I want the transfer to be done within the shortest
possible time. We are tired of waiting for school management that are
inept in getting issues done.”
Another student says: “Because hostel accommodation are not enough, we
pay N250,000 every year. This is enough for us to go outside Nigeria to
school and we are hoping that one day we will graduate from a university
in Nigeria — and someone is sitting upon it playing politics with out
future. We want to be transferred from University of Abuja. We have been
posted for too long.
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