LAUTECH students protest in Osogbo

There was commotion in Osogbo, the capital of Osun State on Wednesday when thousands of students from Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso stormed the city, in mass protest which grounded socio-economic activities for over eight hours.

The students, displaying various placards denouncing the alleged lackadaisical attitude of Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun and his counterpart in Oyo, Senator Isiaka Ajimobi towards the funding of their institution, said it was saddening that the owner states were not committed to the survival of the university.

Vehicular movement was permanently halted as the students marched to the Osun State secretariat, Abere, located along Gbongan-Ibadan expressway, where they demolished mini billboards of Aregbesola’s 60th birthday erected on the median of the dual carriageway.

The students later converged on the popular Olaiya junction, where they held many motorists hostage for several hours, just as anti-riot policemen positioned themselves to avoid total breakdown of law and order.

They condemned in strong terms the failure of Osun and Oyo to pay the salaries of their lecturers and non-release of monthly financial grants to run the university, contending that there was need for the owner states to shed their ego and settle their differences over the management of the institution.

Similarly, the protesters maintained that the protest will continue until the owner states address the problems on ground.

Accompanied by detachment of armed policemen in Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC), they later proceeded to the Osun State House of Assembly to make their demands known to the lawmakers,

Some of the placards displayed by the students read “Aregbe is a failure” “Save LAUTECH now” “Stop playing politics with our lives,” “Pay our lecturers” “Aregebsola should intervene quickly in LAUTECH’s plight.”

According to the spokesperson of the students, Mr Lawal Musbau, “Osun State government has failed to address our demands in providing its own part of the subvention for the institution,” adding that “we are here to intimate the two owner states of Oyo and Osun of our lecturers’ refusal to continue the academic session after completing their examinations a fortnight ago.”

He stated that the lecturers at a congress agreed on the “NO PAY, NO WORK” rule which had paralysed academic activities in the citadel of learning for about a month.

It will be recalled that students of LAUTECH had prevented prospective candidates of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) from writing their examinations last Monday in the Ogbomoso campus due to the pervasive industrial actions experienced since last year.