THE Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma, branch of the Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU) has demanded for the probe and immediate transfer of the Edo State police commissioner, Haliru Gwandu, over report attributed to the commissioner that a lecturer in the institution was arrested over cult-related activities and that 14 dead bodies were discovered in Ekpoma.
The management of the Edo State-owned University had on Wednesday taken on the police commissioner over the same report, remarking that the story was “totally untrue and embarrassing.”
While addressing journalists on Tuesday, Gwandu had reportedly said that a lecturer at the AAU, a professor, was arrested for secret cult-related activities and that a double-barrel gun, single barrel gun and one pump-action gun were recovered from him.
However, at a media briefing held at the campus of the institution in Ekpoma on Thursday, chairperson of AAU chapter of ASUU, Dr Monday Igbafe, said the things said by Gwandu on AAU constituted an attempt to bring AAU to public opium as the allegation were spurious and unfounded.
Igbafe, who was joined by others including the Secretary of the AAU ASUU, A.A. Aizebioje, added that it was an attempt to cover up a case of unwarranted arrest and brutalisation of the Dean of the Faculty of Law of the university, Prof Sunday Edeko, by the Special Anti-Cult squad of the Edo State Police Commandon on March 13, 2017.
He said, “This squad has been a thorn in the flesh of innocent and law-abiding citizens of Ekpoma and its environs.
“This squad led by one ASP Ojo has not only been viscous and lawless, it has equally been involved in house-breaking, extortion, confistication of laptops, indiscriminate arrests and brutalisation of innocent residents of Ekpoma in the name of hunting for cultists and kidnappers.
“What are the names of the lecturers and professors they claimed to have arrested and from which departments? Why did the police not parade the arrested lecturers in this organised press briefing? Where are the bodies or skulls allegedly recovered?”
He wondered why the police did not inform the university about the arrest of one of its lecturers or parade him, but rushed to the press to discredit the university.
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