By Ajifa Treasure Solomon
The students of the University of Jos have sealed off main entrance to the permanent site campus to protest the current power outage and water scarcity plaguing hostels and school environment. The ongoing blackout which has persisted for two days has left students, especially those in the hostels feeling inconvenienced.
According to the students, the university was underperforming greatly, even after the 200% increment in school fees. The protesting students held placards with quotes such as : ‘No light to soak garri’ and ‘’We no get SUG’ while others held empty buckets to symbolise the water scarcity.
The school management through the Deputy vice chancellor, Professor Rahila Gomwalk has now directed the students to send in representatives for negotiations. However, no one has volunteered to go in since the protest was not led by the official student body. You will recall that the last SUG executives were dissolved in February and a new student government has not been formed due to vote tampering during the last SUG elections.
A student who chose to remain anonymous said, “The VC and the school management have refused to give us a listening ear. It is sheer wickedness. They came here this morning and said we should send representatives to negotiate, but how can we be told to negotiate for our rights?”
Meanwhile, an unofficial source told Unijos Echo that the school management was not notified of any strike action until this morning. He said “we got here this morning and discovered that the gate had been locked. There was no official notice. We just started seeing students at the gate. The management will see them and do something soon.”
He also debunked the claims that the school’s electricity cables had been cut by NEPA over the non-payment of electricity bills. He was however elusive about the cause of the power outage.
The students have now vowed to stay at the gate until light is restored. There is a pervading fear by students that if the issue is not resolved today, there would be neither light nor water in the hostels during the Easter break.
Since the gates have been barred, students have created a makeshift entrance by scaling the fence of the university and the university has now deployed Security personnels to the school entrance to monitor the situation.
