| Evil Student…Stabs
lecturer five times over expulsion
By JACOB EDI, Abuja
Sunday, July 25, 2004
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Dr. Agbese
on his sick bed last week
Photo: Sun News Publishing |
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The peaceful academic environment of the Federal Polytechnic,
Nasarawa, was disrupted last Friday when an expelled student
of the school, pounced on the institution’s most senior
lecturer and the dean, student affairs and stabbed him five
times.
The lecturer, Dr. Peter Echo Agbese, now recuperating at Alpha
Hospital, a private hospital in the heart of Nasarawa town,
narrowly escaped death when his assailant thought he was dead
after he inflicted several wounds on his victim.
An eyewitness account told SUNDAY SUN that the HNDI Business
Administration student, Obilor Daniel, popularly known as
Mario, shocked the students of the institution that Friday
morning when he rushed out of the Dean’s office and
threw up his arms and announced “I have fulfilled my
mission. I have killed the bastard, anybody can arrest me
now”.
Some local security staff of the institution had quickly rushed
into the Dean’s office, whose personal assistant had
also began to scream, while some others held the boy to ascertain
what had actually taken place before he was finally handed
over to the police.
When SUNDAY SUN spoke with Dr. Agbese on his hospital bed
where he was attended to by his wife, he confirmed the story
and gave his own side of the story.
Genesis
“About some months back, the school got a report that
two students, a male and female had a problem.
“The report I got was that the boy popularly called
Mario had walked into the girl’s compound and touched
her buttocks and naturally she got angry and warned the Mario
never to play with her that way and he began to beat her up
to the extent that he wounded her. We treated the girl at
the school clinic and asked the students to go and give their
statement to the security department,” Dr Agbese narrated.
But events took a different dimension when the disciplinary
committee of which he is chairman sat and looked at the case
and found Mario guilty and
consequently expelled him. This apparently did not go down
well with the Mario.
DAY OF THE ATTACK
Agbese continued his narration:
“On the day it happened, I got a call from the SUG president
(comrade Abubakar) who said he wanted to discuss with me in
my office. But when I got to school my office was being swept,
so I waited in the outer office. It was at this point that
Mario came in. As soon as he came he sought to know why I
expelled him.
I told him I was sorry, just out of sympathy.
“He went ahead to ask if he could appeal and I said
yes that he should address his appeal to the Rector. At this
point the cleaner had gone out so I went into my office and
shut the door. Less than just a minute later, he forced open
the door and told me the committee was a kangaroo one.
I kept quiet and the next thing was that he brought out a
knife and started stabbing me all over. He did so in five
places. You can even see for yourself.” He removed the
blanket to reveal his wounds.
HOW HE ESCAPED DEATH
Sensing the desperation of his assailant, Agbese had to feign
death to escape further attack: “After struggling with
him severally, I fell down out of exhaustion. I think he thought
I was dead but I was
conscious. I heard him say ‘I have achieved my aim’.
And he walked out. As he was going out I was also crawling
behind him careful, so he won’t come back and attack
me until I got to the conference room and called one of my
staff who now raised an alarm before
I was rushed to the hospital as you can see.”
At the Keffi police station the Divisional Police
Officer was not around to speak to SUNDAY SUN, but it was
learnt that the student was arrested and had since been transferred
to the Divisional Police headquarters in Lafia.
At the time of filing this report, academic activities had
stopped at the poly as a result of the incident. It was gathered
that the local wing of the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics
(ASUP) had boycotted lectures “ in solidarity with our
colleague who was attacked because we were all scared since
we don’t know if the target was all the lecturers.”
The lecturers’ position was confirmed by their chairman,
Mr. Ishaya Daudu, who spoke with SUNDAY SUN in Nassarawa.
He however said the union would soon resume lectures.
Also reacting, the acting rector of the school, Mr. Pius Salami,
lamented the ugly development, saying violence had never being
the school’s tradition in its over two decades of existence.
He, however, revealed that information available to him since
the incident occurred indicated the student in question had
been expelled twice from two different schools in the country.
In his response, the Public Relations Officer of the Students
Union Government, Comrade Adu Thankgod S. Val questioned the
constitution of the committee which recommended Mario’s
expulsion. While not absolving him of the any blame over the
alleged murder attempt, Val insisted there were no student
representative on the committee.
A claim the Ag . rector denied when he spoke with
SUNDAY SUN in his office.
“The student would have had a good case but he went
about it in a wrong way. Let the law take its full course.
Nobody is above the law” a rather disappointed Val told
SUNDAY SUN in his hostel room.
A handful of students who spoke with SUNDAY SUN on condition
of anonymity reacted to the situation with mixed feelings.
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