Students threaten to sue deputy governor

by Adeola Adeyemo

December 17, 2010 03:29AM

Students of the Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education, Lagos, have vowed to take legal action against Deputy Governor Sarah Sosan for the alleged brutal treatment meted on them by her security aides at Alausa on Monday.

The students said they were beaten by police officers attached to the deputy governor in front of the Lagos State House of Assembly. In a bid to express their grievance over the ongoing strike action in the state-owned tertiary institutions, the students trooped to the House of Assembly on Monday, demanding to see the speaker, Adeyemi Kuforiji. “Actually we went to Lagos State House of Assembly to see the Speaker, Kuforiji,” said Mayowa Balogun, the Students Union president of the institution. “I called him personally and told him that we the students are outside and we want to see him. We parked our buses on the road waiting for him to come out. Then we started our normal student life; singing and clapping out there.

According to him, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Transportation, Kayode Opeifa, came to address the students after a while but was rebuffed by the aggrieved youngsters. “We told him that we were not interested in seeing him, but the Speaker of the House,” said the students’ leader. “At that time, we noticed some policemen coming to the area gradually. When we did not see him after some hours, we blocked the Lagos State House of Assembly, road saying that unless we see the Speaker we will not leave. About two hours later, a convoy approached us and the number plate on the car was LS 02, which means the number two person in the state, which is the deputy governor. One of the police men came to us and told us to leave the road, and we told him that we were not leaving until we see the Speaker. In the lead car, there was a woman sitting in the front seat. She was holding a walkie talkie; she gave it to the police man to give me and I refused taking it, telling him that the woman should come down and speak with me if she wanted to.”

The assault

This action, and the refusal of the students to leave the road, he said, infuriated the police officers. “That was when they started beating us,” he said. “They used their hands, guns, rods and so on to beat us. They beat the hell out of us, right in front of the Assembly. Ninety-nine per cent of us were injured. We were about 50 to 70 students there. The bad thing is that some people who came to tow our vehicles from the road also joined them in beating us.”

According to Mr Balogun, the police officers took them to the Alausa Police Station, where they were detained until the intervention of Mr Kuforiji. “They detained me, my general secretary and three other students with one of our drivers at Alausa Police Station,” he said. “They did not put us in the cell but we were there for almost one hour. The PSP of the station, K.P. Longe was there. The major reason why they beat us is because (Deputy Governor) Sosan wanted to pass. She was in that Jeep. The commissioner for education was a product of our school. For her to have treated us like that is very pathetic of her. When we met the Speaker after we were released, he told us that it was disrespectful to block her. He said we should have allowed her to pass when we saw her convoy. The position of the Speaker was very good. Immediately, he ordered them to release our buses and asked them never to touch us and expressed his sympathy on how we were treated.”

Ready for the courts

The aggrieved students say they are not going to forget about the incident and will take legal action against the police officers and the deputy governor. “We are going to take legal action,” said the students leader. “We’ve seen some of our lawyers and they’ve asked us to bring our medical report to back our claims.”

According to him, their decision to go to the Speaker came after several failed attempts to reach Governor Babatunde Fashola. “Times without number, we have tried to reach the governor,” he said. “We’ve had series of press conferences, we’ve been to several media houses to try getting his attention in respect of the strike, to no avail.”

Efforts to reach Mrs Sosan for her reaction, as at press time, were unsuccessful as calls placed to her mobile phone went unanswered. When contacted, Toro Oladapo, the Chief Press Secretary to the deputy governor, said she was not sure that it was Mrs Sosan’s convoy that was involved in the incident on that day and promised to confirm the information. When contacted later, Mrs Oladapo said she had not been able to reach the deputy governor or anyone who would have been in her convoy on Monday.

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