How Police Allegedly Brutalized I9 Poly Ibadan Students

“We never assaulted the police, the man that claimed we assaulted him was trying to shoot us, nobody tried to assault the police.”

“We were sitting in front of our house. Some policemen just came and accused us of being Yahoo boys. They said we were cultists and put handcuffs in our hands, we were taken to Eleyele. I was just wondering what was happening; then I called my dad to brief him. They took us to their station and later, the SUG officials came. We spent some minutes but not up to an hour. When we wanted to talk, someone challenged them and they brought out their ID cards, that was when we were sure that they were policemen. They took us from our house to Eleyele.”

“Immediately they saw the SUG officials, they said I should come, I should come, they sneaked us through the back-door, in the process of releasing us, one of them told them not to release us but the man that arrested us said “They are not students, they are my clients,”

“The policeman who claimed we assaulted him was trying to cock his gun, he was trying to shoot us, even one of his colleagues was telling him not to shoot us. That was what caused the argument. So nobody tried to assault anybody there.
“We were arrested and taken to the inner chamber, we were told to lie down and face the sun, slap us, beat us, even the ladies among us were also beaten, the 19 of us were thoroughly beaten, our cloths were torned. We spent like 30 minutes there and they tied our cloths together like criminals. We were taken into a bus with two policemen to state CID, Iyaganku. It was when we got there that one policemen used his gun to beat one of us, PRO 2. On getting to the state CID, we were asked to sit on the floor. We sat on the floor, after that, we were taken to the office of the person that heads the state CID. We told him what happened, we were told to write statements of what happened. Everybody wrote what happened and after that, we were all taken into the cell, we spent a night, Friday to Saturday. There was no feeding, nobody ate anything.”

“On Saturday, the management came, the Registrar, Dean of Students Affairs, CSO, DPO Sango Police Station, Senate President were all around. Welfare Director of Computer Science was equally around. what I heard is that they went to the CP. I don’t know if they reached an agreement or not. All I know is that they just came and told us to fly out. They took us to the place where we wrote the statements. Most of us lost our phones, shoes, wrist watches and others. Our camera was also damaged. While corroborating the President’s narrative, two of the female students; Maryam Anifowose (Treasurer) and Linda Ezirin (Welfare 1) said they were yet to get over the ugly incident.

Anifowose said,”They beat me from the back, look at my back, there is a wound there, when they beat me, I fell down, they asked me to put my head on the floor, they asked us to face the sun and beat us.
Ezirin said, “I was not feeling fine, they beat me, my stomach is still paining me, they beat me on my Bosom , my stomach; one fair police slapped me. They beat me like a criminal. Meanwhile, management of the institution has dispelled rumour that a student was killed during the misunderstanding.

A statement signed by the Registrar of the institution, Mr. Hezekiah Fehintola on Monday, a copy of which was made available to us maintained that the institution has secured the release of the students and none of them is under suspension. The release,however did not give details of how and the conditions to which the students were released.
“The Management of The Polytechnic, Ibadan has allayed the fears of members of the public on the misunderstanding that occurred between the students of the institution and the police at the State Police Headquarters, Eleyele,Ibadan last weekend.

“No student of the Institution was killed in the crisis as widely reported in the social media and members of the Students’ Union Executive are not on suspension.
“The School Authority did not increase the school fees payable by the students and that the crisis has nothing to do with fees. “Meanwhile, the management of the institution had secured the release of the detained students since Saturday, 11th February, 2017 adding that academic activities remain uninterrupted,”