Students on the rampage in Oyo

Because they failed the last joint promotional examinations, some students of public secondary schools in Oyo, Oyo State have gone on the rampage, burning schools and attacking their teachers and principals.
Under the new policy of Oyo State Government, students would no longer be promoted to another class on trial, as used to be the case in the past, but meet up with reasonable cut off marks in joint promotion examinations.
After the examinations by the government, answer scripts were swapped among schools before markings, to prevent favouritism and other forms of malpractices.
After markings, results are collated and sent to owner schools for distribution to the students.
When the results came, managements of Isale-Oyo Community High School, Oroki; Anglican Secondary School, Apara; and Oba Adeyemi High School, Agbogangan, located in Atiba and Oyo-East local governments
respectively, distributed the joint promotion examination result cards to their students.
On receiving their results and realising that they failed, the students immediately mobilised themselves to unleash terror.
At Oba Adeyemi High School, the students, armed with dangerous weapons such as cutlasses, knives, iron roads, broken bottles and sticks, went on the rampage.
Narrating the ordeal to the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi 111, who paid unscheduled visits to the affected schools, the School Principal, Mrs Oyewo Olufade, who was close to tears, said the incident was like a ‘guerilla warfare’.
According to her, “the students, who covered their faces with masks and armed with dangerous weapons, stormed the school in groups. Immediately the teachers saw the rampaging students, they ran into my office. The
students were hurling stones continuously at my office. So, when the teachers sensed dangers, they ran out of my office and managed to escape into the bush through the swampy path behind the school. In the process, a female teacher, now on danger list in an hospital, was hit on one of her cheeks with a big stone.”.
She explained that the school’s night guard sustained a similar injury and has also been hospitalized.
A resident, who was sent by his parents to take his brother from the school when the crisis was raging, died during the crisis.
“On entering the school, he (deceased) went straight to the night guard who was lying with pains in a pool of his blood for an enquiry.
The injured night guard mistook him for one of the students
who injured him.
The night guard, out of anger, brought out a fetish object and hit the deceased in retaliation. He died on the third day.”
The situation, she said, created tension in the community to the extent that staffers of the school, including teachers, were being threatened, but for timely intervention of the Alaafin who sent a delegation led by the retired Methodist Archbishop, Ayo Ladigbolu, to mediate and calm fray nerves.
The School’s Principal was described by some of the parents
interviewed as “a disciplinarian, diligent, motivator and hardworking woman who has zero tolerance for undesirable acts”.
“When she was the Principal at one of the notorious schools in Oyo here, which is Durbar Grammar School, she did everything humanly possible, within her one year tenure, to transform the school, by changing lives of the pupils with undesirable acts into responsible citizens through unrelentless counseling, moral motivation, and
spiritual rejuvenation. Today, that notorious school is one of the best public schools in Oyo metropolis in terms of learning and character. We had children in SS3 when she was the Principal, so, we know her”.
At the Anglican Secondary School, Apara, office louvers, classroom windows, and part of the wall fence were destroyed.
At Isale Oyo Community Grammar School, Oroki, blocks of classrooms were burnt and some of the teachers injured.
It took men of the state fire service several hours before the fire could be put out.
As a result of the sad development, the Caretaker Chairman of Oyo-East
Local Government, Mr. Azeez Ojetunde Tirimisiyu, summoned an emergency
meeting of Baales and chiefs, as well as community leaders on how to curtail such situation in the future.
This was followed by stakeholders meeting, comprising Principals of secondary schools, Chairmen of Parents Teachers Association, Local Inspector of Education in the area, Chairman of All Conference of Principals of Secondary Schools (ANCOPPS), and representative of the
Divisional Police Officer (DPO), Durbar.
At the meeting, stakeholders gave accounts of the incidents and
brainstormed on how to nip in the bud such acts of indiscipline by the
students.
In his address, the council boss noted that “hardly any family exists without a child possessing one trait of indiscipline or the other. It is either the child steals, is rude, not well mannered, runs away from classes, and or at times, if the child is a female, it may be that she possesses indulgent sexual acts which may create great concerns for the
parents. It is also possible that the child is one way or the other a drug addict. In whatever way it is viewed whether the child exhibits any of these features or many others, which are socially undesirable, such a child is certainly a problem to the family and the society at large”
Tirimisiyu lamented over the rate of indiscipline in the society.
He pointed accusing fingers to most youths and adults, noting that they are suffering from what he called social, moral, political and economic indiscipline.
He called on stakeholders to fashion out ways of stemming the tide
indiscipline among secondary school students.
Speaking with reporters after visits to the affected schools, the Alaafin of Oyo, who was accompanied by the Oyo traditional council (Oyo Mesi), some traditional rulers from Oke-Ogun area and three out of the four Councils’ caretaker Chairmen, described the incident as “disheartening, worrisome and disturbing”.
Oba Adeyemi confirmed the obvious fact that the rate of indiscipline and crime among youths, and in recent times secondary school students, was growing fast.
“It is also sad, to note that students’ indiscipline has had a lot of negative effects on the school system and learning, as many academic calendar are being disrupted as a result of this indiscipline. Many students now form themselves into gangs and threaten lives of fellow students and even teachers. It is as a result of this indiscipline that we now have secret societies or cults even in our primary and secondary schools. It is necessary for the stakeholders to pay attention to the frequent indiscipline among our students, if the
country is to achieve fame and progress in all fields of human endeavour,. This is because the fate of any nation depends on the youths she breeds, as they are the leaders of tomorrow”.
The paramount ruler, who hinted that he instructed the police not to use live ammunition on the students in the face of provocations, said were the policemen not tactical, tolerant and responsible in the discharge of their duty, situations would have been more disastrous.
The Alaafin, therefore, commiserated with family of the deceased and all those affected in the incidence.
He urged residents not to take laws into their hands, but to be law abiding and refrain from acts inimical to unity and peaceful co-existence.
It was learned that some of the students have been arrested.