No fewer than 100 armed policemen dispatched under the directive of the State Commissioner of Police, Maigari Dikko, yesterday, stopped members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, Ebonyi State University, EBSU, chapter from staging a peaceful protest against the Federal government over its inability to address the ongoing strike by the union.
DailyPost learnt that apart from the police intervention, some officials of other security agencies including the Department of State Services, DSS, were also deployed at strategic corners in the institution to stop the protest.
The policemen who were armed with AK 47 rifles, canisters of tear gas among others, shut the gate leading to the College of Agricultural Science, CAS, Campus of the university, thereby preventing members of the Union from matching through the streets of Abakaliki, the state capital.
The EBSU-ASUU members who walked round the university campus carried placards with the inscriptions: “FG: Save University Education,” “FG: Do not kill University education,” “FG: Agreement is Agreement;” “Poor university education makes every sector fake,” “Nigeria: “Fight poor education.”, “FG-ASUU Agreement! FG has reneged,’’ and ‘’Say no to Beggarcracy” among others as they chanted solidarity songs.
It was however gathered that the anti-riot policemen apparently embarked on stop-and-search at the gate of the campus as they tried to seize all the placards and flyers from the protesters.
Addressing newsmen at the Campus Gate, the Chairman of the union in EBSU, Prof. Ndubuisi Idenyi accused the Federal Government of playing politics with the future of Nigerians by not fulfilling the agreement it reached with ASUU in 2009.
According to Idenyi, no amount of intimidation from any quarters would deter them from pursuing their objectives.
“In a democratic setting, people should have their right of association and movements; I think it is wrong for the Nigeria Police to restrict our movements. It is even more pathetic that we were locked inside our campus as we were not allowed to move out of the gate.
“I asked whether our gate was locked by our university security personnel and the information we got was that it was the police that ordered their men to lock it.
“They should be more civil-friendly because the issues we are talking about borders on education and they have their children in our schools while some of them are our students,” he added.
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