PM News, Lagos, 29 July 2002

3 Students Flogged Unconscious

Three senior secondary school students of Ikeja High School were on Friday beaten to a state of coma on the order of the Lagos State Commissioner for Education, Professor Idowu Sobowale. The commissioner reportedly supervised the beating.

The SSS2 students of the school were among several others beaten at the commissioner's office at Alausa for embarking on a protest over what they (students) described as their general failure in the examinations conducted by one of their teachers. Some of the students who spoke with P.M.News said the teacher failed at least eighty-five per cent of the SSS2 students in the examination, a situation which did not go down well with the students, prompting them to protest their failures.

The students were alleged to have written a protest letter to their Principal, Mrs. M.M. Olateju and equally embarked on unruly behaviour, a development which earned them a week's suspension.

Sources told P.M.News that after the expiration of the suspension, the students were asked to report to the commissioner's office where they were given six strokes of the cane each as a further punishment for their unruly behaviour. It was in the course of being beaten that three of the student fainted.

According to eye witnesses, the students who fainted were not immediately given medical attention by the officials of the ministry, until other students began shouting and rushed out of the office. The students then in protest destroyed louvres at the commissioner's office.

Men of the Lagos State Emergency Ambulance Services (LASAMBUS), it was further learnt, were immediately invited to convey the three students who were already gasping for breath to the hospital, while their colleagues and parents, who came with them, protested the unfortunate incident.

A visit to the school this morning revealed the presence of police vehicle belonging to the Lagos State Environmental (Special) Offences Tribunal stationed at the gate, while some parents were seen at the principal's office. Efforts to speak with the principal proved abortive as she was said to be attending a meeting with the parents.