The President of Students Union Government (SUG) of the Polytechnic of Ibadan, Comrade Oluwadamilola Peter Edema has refuted allegations levelled against the students of the institution by the Oyo State Police Command for allegedly assaulting police, breaching public peace and invasion of its headquarters.
Edema while recounting the one night ordeal in an interview with DAILY POST on Monday at the SUG Building of the institution said, “We never assaulted the police, the man that claimed we assaulted him was trying to shoot us, nobody tried to assault the police.”
He said the two students the SUG officials and their colleagues went to secure their release at the headquarters were truly arrested at their house located at Onigbodogi area of Apete, a suburb of Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
The two students are Olamide Abegunde and Toib Lawal all in HND 2 Architecture department.
The duo while narrating their ugly experience to DAILY POST on Monday said they were arrested in front of their house and taken to the command’s headquarters but were hurriedly released some minutes upon seeing the SUG officials and their colleagues who came to secure their release.
Abegunde said, “We were sitting in front of our house. Some policemen just came and accused us of being Yahoo boys. They said we were cultists and put handcuffs in our hands, we were taken to Eleyele. I was just wondering what was happening; then I called my dad to brief him. They took us to their station and later, the SUG officials came. We spent some minutes but not up to an hour. When we wanted to talk, someone challenged them and they brought out their ID cards, that was when we were sure that they were policemen. They took us from our house to Eleyele.”
Lawal said, “Immediately they saw the SUG officials, they said I should come, I should come, they sneaked us through the back-door, in the process of releasing us, one of them told them not to release us but the man that arrested us said “They are not students, they are my clients,”
At first, it was not even the Yahoo issue they arrested us for, they said they arrested us for cultism. They said they were going to kill us, that they wanted to kill cultists. Some of them are in complete police uniform, some are using the apron while some are in mufti.”
The duo said it would amount to misrepresentation of facts if the police said they were not arrested in the first place.
The SUG President however maintained that no action will be taken now but all facts and figures would be used to ensure that justice prevails.
General Secretary of the union, Comrade Afeez Shittu gave the list of the detained students as follows:
Oluwadamilola Peter Edema (President); Olawale Lawal (Vice President); Afeez Shittu (General Secretary); Maryam Anifowose (Treasurer); Oluwatosin Alao (Auditor); Linda Ezirin (Welfare 1); Seun Dahunsi (Social Director); Moshood Sanni (Sport Director); Yetunde Adekunle (Assistant General Secretary); Olasunkami Salako (Public Relations Officer 2); and Samad Adejumo (Welfare 2).
Others include, Presidents of Faculties of Science, Engineering, Financial Management and Business and Communication as well as President of Department of Purchasing and Supply.
Revealing their ugly experiences, the SUG President, Comrade Edema said, “We were dehumanized, many of us were injured, after the arrest, we were beaten but we did not assault anyone.
“The policeman who claimed we assaulted him was trying to cock his gun, he was trying to shoot us, even one of his colleagues was telling him not to shoot us. That was what caused the argument. So nobody tried to assault anybody there.
“We were arrested and taken to the inner chamber, we were told to lie down and face the sun, slap us, beat us, even the ladies among us were also beaten, the 19 of us were thoroughly beaten, our cloths were torned. We spent like 30 minutes there and they tied our cloths together like criminals. We were taken into a bus with two policemen to state CID, Iyaganku. It was when we got there that one policemen used his gun to beat one of us, PRO 2. On getting to the state CID, we were asked to sit on the floor. We sat on the floor, after that, we were taken to the office of the person that heads the state CID. We told him what happened, we were told to write statements of what happened. Everybody wrote what happened and after that, we were all taken into the cell, we spent a night, Friday to Saturday. There was no feeding, nobody ate anything.”
When asked what led to their release, Edema said up till now, he had not been briefed on what led to their release, but what he knows ”is that we were told the management of the institution and other stakeholders went to meet the Commissioner of Police, Mr. Sam Adegbuyi on Saturday.
“On Saturday, the management came, the Registrar, Dean of Students Affairs, CSO, DPO Sango Police Station, Senate President were all around. Welfare Director of Computer Science was equally around. what I heard is that they went to the CP. I don’t know if they reached an agreement or not. All I know is that they just came and told us to fly out. They took us to the place where we wrote the statements. Most of us lost our phones, shoes, wrist watches and others. Our camera was also damaged.
While corroborating the President’s narrative, two of the female students; Maryam Anifowose (Treasurer) and Linda Ezirin (Welfare 1) said they were yet to get over the ugly incident.
Anifowose said,”They beat me from the back, look at my back, there is a wound there, when they beat me, I fell down, they asked me to put my head on the floor, they asked us to face the sun and beat us.
Ezirin said, “I was not feeling fine, they beat me, my stomach is still paining me, they beat me on my breast, my stomach; one fair police slapped me. They beat me like a criminal.
Meanwhile, management of the institution has dispelled rumour that a student was killed during the misunderstanding.
A statement signed by the Registrar of the institution, Mr. Hezekiah Fehintola on Monday, a copy of which was made available to DAILY POST maintained that the institution has secured the release of the students and none of them is under suspension. The release,however did not give details of how and the conditions to which the students were released.
“The Management of The Polytechnic, Ibadan has allayed the fears of members of the public on the misunderstanding that occurred between the students of the institution and the police at the State Police Headquarters, Eleyele,Ibadan last weekend.
“No student of the Institution was killed in the crisis as widely reported in the social media and members of the Students’ Union Executive are not on suspension.
“The School Authority did not increase the school fees payable by the students and that the crisis has nothing to do with fees.
“Meanwhile, the management of the institution had secured the release of the detained students since Saturday, 11th February, 2017 adding that academic activities remain uninterrupted,” the statement read.
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