I KNOW THIS IS LONG, BUT IT IS WORTH THE READ (or scheme through it). THE TRUTH NEEDS TO BE TOLD ABOUT MADONNA UNIVERSITY. AS A FORMER STUDENT OF MADONNA UNIVERSITY USED TO BE A STUDENT THERE AND I KNOW FOR A FACT THAT WORSE THINGS THAN THIS HAPPENS IN THAT UNIVERSITY. LETS DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS.

Two students of Madon­na University, Akpugo Campus, Enugu State, have told the horrifying story of torture they suffered in the hands of key officials of the tertiary institution.

The duo, Stanley Okoye, 23, a final year Civil Engineering student and Ga-Lim Aondofa Lord, escaped death by the whiskers after they were allegedly abducted from their rooms February 3, 2015, in the dead of the night, in commando fashion, by the Chief Security Officer of the university, Okey Ogbonna and the Dean of Student Affairs, Rev. Fr. Isaac Nginga, a Catholic priest, in company of others and taken to a secluded area on the campus, where they were tortured, brutalized, dehu­manised and left to die, but through divine intervention, they lived to tell the story.
Stanley still needs to undergo special surgery in Germany on the spine to repair a major damage inflicted on him while the torture lasted. Aondofa suffered a dislocated jaw that required having his jaws held together with special dental wire to allow the injury heal. The duo would for the rest of their lives bear the burden of the deep psychological scars imprinted on their minds by the experience.
Accompanied by their parents, the victims who visited The Sun office in Onitsha gave a chilling account of what they passed through in the campus, and revealed the alleged moves by the university management to cover up the truth.

THEY WERE ABDUCTED AND TORTURED

Continuing, Stanley said: “These people were accompanied that night by an armed soldier, who is among our security guards in school. First, they asked for the room number of my friend and classmate, Lord Ga-Lim and I told them. They picked him up from his hostel and forced both of us into the vehicle. They first drove us to the administrative building and we alighted. Without any question, they descended on us after commanding us to lie down on the gravel. It was Rev. Father Isaac who hit us first with his belt, and the others then joined. They beat us with military belts, planks, batons, iron, stones and other dangerous weapons they could lay their hands on; they dealt mercilessly with us.

“All the while they were treading on us as we lay on the sharp, rough gravel. Not even our plea for mercy or cries for help could melt their hearts. Fr. Isaac even commanded the military officer to shoot us if we attempted to run away. In fact, the soldier fired the shot but narrowly missed me. I was coughing out blood and bleeding profusely but Ogbonna, the CSO hit me with his elbow and I fell down again.

“A police officer on duty at the station asked them whether we were involved in accident but they didn’t answer. In that state, I told the police that we were attacked by the same people, who brought us to the station and the police told them to take us to a specialist hospital or else we would die but they just took us back to the campus and dumped us in the campus clinic. I was in pains and we were struggling to hang on to life. They only gave us painkillers and sleep inducing drugs. It was one of the nurses who saw our condi­tion that night that I whispered my mother’s number into her ears and she used her phone, after hiding the number, to notify my parents about our plight.
“While we were in the hospital, they confiscated our phones, laptops and all our friends and roommates’ phones and communication gadgets to ensure that information about us did not leak to the outside commu­nity. We were dying in installments. On February 5, I was woken up by the CSO, who told me that my father was at the gate and wanted to see me. My dad was shocked when he saw my condition. When he tried to take a picture of me, they seized his camera and smashed it on the ground. After heated argument between my dad and the people at the gate, they immediately bundled my friend and myself to the Elele campus of the university in Rivers State, in the dead of the night without the knowledge of my father. We were in the hospital at Elele for about seven weeks shut out from the people and still under police watch even on our hospital bed. We underwent several surgeries because the doctor confirmed that my zygo­matic bone close to the spine was fractured. My friend had fractures on the lower and upper jaws.

I fainted when I saw my son –Okoye

Narrating how he heard about his son’s ordeal and the frustrations he encountered in the course of seeking justice for the victimized students, Chief Okoye told Sunday Sun that he was in Lagos when his wife called him from their Abuja home.

"On getting to the school gate, I was denied entry by the security peo­ple and left stranded for four hours. When I noticed that the matter was no more a small issue not to talk of the uncertainty surrounding my son’s life, knowing that his phone was already permanently switched off, I sought for external help through the military. It was the high command at the 82 Division of the Nigerian Army, Enugu that assisted me before they could allow me to enter and stay by the side of the gate while they went to fetch my son. When they brought him, I fainted, upon seeing his condition".

“After regaining composure a bit, I asked him who did that to him and he pointed out the CSO, the Rev Father and some others. I wanted to take his picture in that state for practical evidence but to my surprise, another Catholic priest named Fr. Francis, who came in from Elele, Rivers State with two police escorts ordered the security men to smash my camera which is worth N300,000 to pieces, and they did. They also threatened to shoot me if I didn’t tread with cau­tion. After all arguments, we agreed that the children should be taken to either Enugu State University Teaching Hospital (ESUTH) or Uni­versity of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Ituku Ozalla, Enugu State, but to my surprise again, as soon as I left, they bundled the children in that state to their headquarters at Elele, Rivers State.

“The children were kept in­communicado and detained in the hospital too. It was through military assistance that I was able to gain access to see them in the hospital but they refused to release them to us for proper medical care.”

Federal High Court to the rescue

Through the granted reliefs sought by the applicants, the management of Madonna University later released the wounded students from the hospi­tal though there are other pending matters in the suit. The case was adjourned till October 29, 2015.

Catholic priest, CSO remanded in prison custody, granted mysterious bail

On their release from the hospital in Elele, Stanley and Aondofa sought private treatment in other different hospitals. Stanley was admitted at Olabisi Onabanjo Teaching Hospital, Ogun State while Aondofa also went for corrective surgeries on his broken jaw. It was at the teaching hospital that the doctor revealed that Stanley would still require a corrective surgery abroad for his cervical region to avoid total and irreversible damage to the spinal cord as a result of the injuries sustained from the torture.

Incensed that the university man­agement showed no concern or even bothered to reach out to the aggrieved families of the brutalized students, who are solely bearing the spiraling cost of the victims’ medical bills, while the perpetrators of the acts have been walking about scot-free, Okoye petitioned the Commissioner of Po­lice seeking for criminal prosecution of the alleged culprits.

The petition signed by Barrister A.C Arinze of the chambers of G. E Ezeuko (SAN) and addressed to the Enugu State Commissioner of Police, copy of which was obtained by the Sunday Sun, was entitled: “Petition Against Torture, Maltreatment, De­humanization, Unlawful Detention and Battering meted against Ifeanyi Stanley Okoye and Lord Aondofa Galim by staff and officials of Ma­donna University, Akpugo Campus, Enugu State.”

Acting on the contents of the petition, and particularly moved by the pictures of the tortured state of the victims, the Commissioner of Police, after interviewing both parties and expressing serious dismay over the inhuman treatment of the students, ordered the detention of the duo of Fr. Nginga and Ogbonna Okey while others connected to the alleged crime were declared wanted.

Then on Tuesday, July 14, 2015, Nginga and Ogbonna were arraigned in an Enugu Magistrate court presid­ed over by Nkemdilim Anibueze on a two-count charge of conspiracy and felony.

When the court registrar read the first charge against the defendants, an argument ensued between the police prosecutor, Anichima Boniface and the defence counsel from the chambers of Tony Muogbo, SAN, who argued that the first count charge preferred against the defendants was incompetent, arguing that the court lacked jurisdiction to try the case.

After arguments, the magistrate ordered that the defendants be remanded in prison till the next adjourned date (July 21, 2015) for her to rule on whether the first count charge should subsist and on the issue of jurisdiction.

When the case was called on the resumed hearing, which was wit­nessed by Sunday Sun reporter and other journalists, a mild drama played out when the magistrate expressly granted all the prayers of the defence counsel and disallowed any objection from the police prosecutor or the counsel to the victimised students.

The magistrate, after ruling that the court did what it was supposed to do by remanding the suspects in prison custody when issues of competency of the court, charges or jurisdiction arose, later gave room for the counsel to argue their points.

The defence counsel, Tony Muogbo, SAN represented by Mrs V.C. Okoye told the court that the defendants had applied for and were granted bail by Agbani High Court, presided over by Justice Anidi, stressing that they had met the bail conditions. She explained that Friday and Monday, being November 17 and 20 respectively, were public holidays, therefore the defendants could not pay the necessary fees to obtain the certified true copies of the bail application.

The police prosecutor, Anichima, while addressing the court said that the argument by the defence counsel was a novelty to him because he had never heard that a defendant standing trial in a magistrate court could go to another court to seek and obtain bail when the magistrate hearing the case had not dispensed with it. The presiding magistrate in her ruling admitted the files as Exhibits A, A2, A3, A4 and E, which were enclosed in a big envelope. She stated that the case had been bonded over with the sum of N200,000 while the matter was adjourned sine-die pending when the Attorney General of Enugu State through the Director of Public Prosecution would give his opinion.

Before the magistrate could finish her remarks, the cleric and the CSO jumped out of the dock and in a jiffy, rushed to the door, followed immediately by other priests from Madonna University, who came to court in solidarity. Before the two lawyers could step out of the court, the defendants had already boarded a vehicle waiting within the premises and the driver zoomed off.

In a chat with Sunday Sun within the court premises, counsel to the brutalized students, Fidelis Mba­dugha expressed dismay over what transpired in the court, saying that there were indications that something transpired in secret before the court sitting. He said the proper thing the magistrate ought to have done was to first of all decline jurisdiction. He said the high court had no jurisdiction to grant bail when the matter was still pending in a magistrate court.

His words: “It is after a magis­trate court must have concluded and transmitted the case file to the DPP, and the DPP had prepared his opinion that the defendants could then apply for bail at the high court. The high court would then see the proceedings and records at the lower court before granting the bail. This kind of procedure has not happened in our justice system and we will study the situation and know the next step to take.”

Mother of Ga-Lim Aondofa Lord, Mrs. Yemi Lim, who spoke to Sunday Sun from Benue State, where she lives, expressed sadness and dismay over the whole situation, alleging that the university authorities were eager to cover the truth.

“I’m not happy over the whole sit­uation. My son was tortured, assault­ed, locked up and would have died in that school but till today, nobody from the institution has communi­cated to us what actually happened. They performed surgery on my son without my signing any consent form. I was at the Elele hospital from February 17 to March 26, at my own expense but all I see is conspiracy of silence. I asked Fr. Mike at Elele to tell me the offence my son commit­ted but he said nothing. It is very dis­appointing and I say that this barbaric action must stop in that school. In 2013, two students were (allegedly) set ablaze at the Okija campus of the university. That matter was also swept under the carpet. I want justice to be done,” she said.

Another student brutalized for making noise

In the course of investigating this case, Sunday Sun also encoun­tered another student at the Akpugo campus of the university, who was allegedly brutalized for making noise during a church service in the campus. Sunday Sun learnt that the incident also involved the CSO and the cleric in charge of student affairs. He said they used military belt to beat him, and inflicted serious injuries on him. The scars of the injuries were still visible on his face since November 2014 when the incident happened.

In the interim, and particularly regarding the controversial circum­stances that led to the temporary discharge of the accused persons by the magistrate court, Chief Samuel Okoye has made a vow that the struggle to ensure that the victims get justice will continue. He threatened to petition the National Judicial Council, the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC), National Human Rights Commission and other relevant bodies both in Nigeria and abroad over the matter. Okoye also punctured the claims by the uni­versity PRO that the students were cultists, saying that such labeling was also an indirect indictment on the university management.

“They can thwart the course of justice but it will only be for a while. How can a university where you have armed soldiers, policemen as well as other private guards, claim that my son is a cultist. Also, does the law allow anybody to become the arresting authority, prosecutor, and dispenser of justice at the same time in a jungle manner? They wanted to use my son for rituals but God said no. There are still so many unanswered questions about what happened to my son and his friend. The Rev. Father still needs to tell the whole world where they were taking my son and his friend in the dead of the night in the trunk of the vehicles after torturing them half dead, beating the university security and the police. If God did not expose this crime, we would have heard a different story about what happened to the students. Since this matter started, they have been busy trying to cover up by de­stroying evidence and reaching out to some people so that the matter would be swept under the carpet. That was why they destroyed my camera and also refused to release the medical records of the tortured students but I know that there is God in heaven who oversees the affairs of men,” Okoye said.
READ FULL ARTICLE AT:
http://sunnewsonline.com/new/our-torture-story-madonna-varsity-students-narrate-ordeal-in-hands-of-institutions-officials/

Fear rev.Fathers!

Tis sad to hear reports like this emanating from our tertiary institutions. I wish that these boys get the best health treatment and that justice prevail. Our institutions of learning for molding young minds now seems to be a penitentiary. How sad. But I do believe that things will get better.

That madonna uni is somethinng else, had a sis who graduated from there.

Kingsasian:
Fear rev.Fathers!

Is that the only thing you got from the story?

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I hate Madonna University with passion. I'd rather be a Uniben or Lasu dropout than hold their certificate