Some structures at the main campus of Adamawa State Polytechnic Yola (SPY) were set ablaze as several students were reported to have been injured as a result of beating with clubs and machete by combined forces of military personnel and police officers on students on Thursday.
It was reported that security forces who chased the students up to their hostels, used cubs and cutlasses on them thereby causing injuries to some students getting ready for examinations.
According to some eyewitnesses, the faceoff between the students started shortly after the management passed a notice banning a popular graduation campus culture “Signing Out.”
The angry students then took their celebrations outside the campus which led to gridlocks on the street opposite the campus.
Following the unrest, Registrar, Rebecca Kinjir of the institution issued a statement conveying management’s decision of closing down the school.
The statement which was copied to Deans of schools, HODs, and Chief Security Officer reads, “This is to inform all staff and students that for security reason, the polytechnic is closed with immediate effect.
“Students are to vacate the hostel and school premises immediately. Students that are yet to finish examinations are to write their examinations after Easter break.
“Comply with the directive and give peace a chance.”
Some of the injured students said “As the students who graduated today began a similar celebration, some security forces stormed our campus at around12:30 pm to 3p d began shooting into the air sporadically and chasing students all over the campus.
“We were to write examinations by 2 pm today, when all of a sudden, some security forces attacked some of us, my friends escaped but they caught me and treated me like a criminal.
“More than ten of them used the studs of their guns and clubs to crush my legs, I could not walk, my friends had to take me to a hospital.
“What surprised me is that I did not say anything negative at them, I and my colleagues were on our way to write exams and we were not told it has been canceled, so it was logical that we would be heading to exams halls, after all, it did not involve us, since it was about graduating students celebration, so why did they attack us?.
“We don’t know why police would just come to our campus invited by our school management and start attacking us and shooting sporadically all over the campus and scaring students away.
“Those who graduated were just celebrating and that is not a criminal activity, so bringing armed men into the campus is wicked and the state government looks into that.
“I was in the school clinic, several students are there with various degrees of injuries and some asthmatic patients collapsed amid the confusion”, they added.
Veteran journalist and recipient of A.B.C Yola, Reporter of the Year Award (1997), Hassan Umar Shallpella, works with WAP as a Regional Correspondence. He was trained at Institute of Mass Communication and Technology Jos and Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, Training School Lagos.He was a News desk Editor and a Correspondent at the Punch newspaper and till 2019, was the Deputy Editor ofThe Scope newspaper.
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