Brutalization of Students in Nigerian Universities in the Age of Technology -By Ibrahim Jabir Isah

It is disheartening the way students are being treated in some Nigerian Universities. The fundamental human rights of these students as citizens of Nigeria as enshrined in the 1999 constitution is grossly violated with reckless impunity.

The primary purpose of having security outfit in Nigerian Universities is to safeguard lives and properties of the staff and students as well as to prevent any uprising that may pave way for the destruction of the above mentioned valuables.

However, reverse is the case as some security personnel in Nigerian Universities see themselves as field marshals and treat students without respect for their human dignity.

I thought University is a free world; if so, how can a free world exist without freedom? Being it a free world, I don’t advocate for a lawless or chaotic society for I am a student of Political Science. What I expect from a University management from the apex to the bottom is dialogue since the students are not toddlers they are grown up individuals who are to be treated with some degree of respect.

They’re laws governing the conduct of students and staff within the university and I believe there is no section or subsection of the university laws that warrants even a lecturer to whip a student not to talk of an ordinary security.

I only know, see and hear cases of students being physically assaulted by security personnel in primary/secondary schools but it’s becoming glaring that some of our Universities are degenerating to the low of the low to the extent that undergraduates are physically assaulted by those who are employed to secure them. This is barbaric.

A University is a place of advanced learning where every staff and student need to know their rights as well as their limitations. However, it is sad that the security in some of our Universities don’t know there actual place until someone shows them the way.

Oppression is the brain child of most evil stemming up in Nigeria because someone who is oppressed may likely be frustrated and someone who’s frustrated may likely be aggressive and someone who’s aggressive can do and undo.

If we look back into history we will find out that the genesis of cultism in Nigeria is as a result of oppression meted out to students.

When it got to the saturation point the students decided to fight back by forming groups to challenge the existing status quo in Nigerian Universities in the 60s which we all know as the divergent cult groups today. Consequently, Students unions were allowed to operate in order to curtail and avoid the hike in activities of cultists within and outside the University.

Nevertheless, there are universities that are averse to Students unionism. They try to emasculate students unions such that they are left with little or no power to challenge the authorities of the school even if it’s on matter related to violation of student’s right. Thus, such a union becomes nothing but a rubber stamp and a toothless bull dog that cannot even bark.

Most cases of violation of students right in Nigerian Universities are been done by Universities whose students union are called Student’s Representative Council (SRC). The most annoying part of it now is that some students don’t know what it takes to be called student. They lack the spirit of studentship. As a student, an attack to one is an attack to all.

The rationale behind this my wake up call is due to what happened in my Alma matter (Federal University Gashua, Yobe state) some days ago. A video was circulating on the social media where a 400 level student of English and literary studies known as Adeayele Abiodun was brutalized by some security personnel of the university.

According to the victim his offense was that he went to snap a passport that will be used to personalize their degree certificate in a hall called 1000 capacity. The security men asked him to go outside and wait until the photographers arrived and as we all know the sun in Gashua is close to hell. Due to the sunny nature of the whether he out rightly told them he can’t. Lo and behold he saw five security men like monster pouncing on him. He was bleeding profusely and was drag out like a dead animal and dumped unconsciously in a sun after he lost two teeth in the process.

The worst part of it is that students were there. Neither do they made attempt to stop them nor do they defend their own. Unknown to them that the evil they fail to destroy or stand against today will definitely consume them tomorrow.

The best they did was to video coverage and share with the larger society.

Who do you expect to come and fight for your right if you can’t do that for yourselves?

May be students from ABU, BUK, UDUS, Unimaid, FUD and other federal universities will come and do that for you. I guess by then most of you would have been killed by the security men.

Nevertheless, thank God for technology, the last hope of the hopeless students who happen to be victims of brutalization. If not for technology it wouldn’t have come to our notice that such barbaric attitude is still taking place in Nigerian Universities in the 21st century.

The security personnel made attempt to lay their filthy fingers on one of us during our undergraduate days but the end result is a story they will never want to hear again.
Though the case was reported to the Dean of Student Affairs and even at the time of this my writing no action has been taking.

I want to use this medium to appeal to the management of Federal University Gashua to call their security personnel to order and to know that the children under their care are not prisoners or criminals; they are students with fundamental human rights and that school is a place of learning not a place of brutality.

Federal University Gashua is our Alma matter and we are proud of it anywhere we find ourselves. But with things like this we are highly disappointed. We wish and hope the school management will get to the root of the matter and bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to book so that justice would be done to Mr. Adeayele Abiodun.

We want #Justice for Adeayele Abiodun
We want #Freedom for students from security molestation.

Ibrahim Jabir Isah
Ibrahimjabir62@gmail.com