BREAKING: Court frees UNILAG students, others from Kirikiri Prison
Activists who were arrested for protesting on behalf of a blind University of Lagos (UNILAG) student have been freed.
Some of the activists are UNILAG students who were rusticated for demanding better living conditions on the school campus.
They peacefully protested at Television Continental (TVC) and in UNILAG after blind student Lawrence Success was suspended for asking why there were too many bedbugs in UNILAG hostels.
Police arrested the protesters on allegations they disrupted the peace at TVC, a claim the station denied. Police had arraigned the students before a mobile court that remanded them in Kirikiri Prision pending their bail hearing today.
The students were freed today after the government dropped all charges against them. It appeared police lied to lock them up.
Protesters had gathered at the mobile court in Oshodi to demand unconditional release of the 13 students.
“Victory at Last! The State Government has withdrawn their fake charges against the UNILAG undergraduates this morning having been bombarded by voices of reason and the students are therefore released,” Segun Olawoye, who is among those who condemned the police action wrote after the students were freed.
“Next, UNILAG will be bombarded for VC Rahman Bello to stop his senseless and despotic use of hifalutin ego against innocent students who were only asking for a conducive learning environment.
“It shows UNILAG Professors are empty and cannot tolerate student intellectualism.
“Imagine Professors who can only plagiarize and cannot come up with any innovation, only know how to copy and paste a template of rustication letter and put new names on it,” he wrote.
Activists now call for the removal of police commissioner Fatai Owoseni over his alleged connivance with UNILAG management to imprison wrongfully imprison the students.
Owoseni had told TVC without presenting any evidence that Femi Adeyeye, one of the rusticated students who was thrown in Prison, “has a history of violence”.
