Commuters stranded as students of Abia Poly protest shutdown vehicular activities

Vehicular activities were on Thursday shutdown in Aba, the commercial nerve of Abia State for several hours as students of the Abia State Polytechnic, Aba took to the Aba-Owerri expressway, which serves as the major exit and entry route in the commercial town to hold a peaceful protest.

Our correspondent who was at the scene of the incident reports that the students who protested in front of their school gate, obstructed movements of vehicles going in and out of Aba, using the expressway.

While the protest forced commuters to trek to their destination, especially those whose offices were close to the polytechnic. Others, including customers of financial institutions in the area were forced to make use of other branches in Aba to perform their financial transactions while the protest lasted.

Some of the protesting students told our correspondent that they were on the road to protest an alleged rape of one of their students identified as Chidinma Wednesday night by the personnel of the Rapid Response Squad (RRS) at a popular student hostel in Aba North Local Government Area, some kilometers away from the polytechnic.

The students who came out on the road at about 9am in front of their school gate, ordering commercial and private motorists to turned back, also bore different placards accusing the management of the polytechnic of being responsible to the inability of students of the engineering department to join their counterparts from going for the mandatory National Youth Service.

Some of the students that spoke to infonet9ja.com stated that part of their grouse is the inability of the state government to pay staff of the institution, their accrued 29 months arrears of salary, which they claimed has affected the willingness of the lecturers to teach the students will their heart.

The students said that failure of the management and government to address some of the issues that were raised would mean that the scheduled semester examination would not hold.

The Police Public Relations Officer in the state, SP Geoffrey Ogbonna in a telephone interview confirmed being aware of the student’s protest, but stated that he would reaching out to the Divisional Police Officer in-charge of the polytechnic community (who was in a meeting at the time of filing the report) to get adequate information on the grouse of the protesting students.

A senior officer in RRS who doesn’t want to be mentioned dismissed the allegation of rape of the female student by its personnel as false.

According to the source, the personnel of the RRS never visited the said student lodge and called on the authorities of the state command and the polytechnic to investigate and find out the security personnel that may have invaded the student lodge.

The management of Abia Polytechnic were said to be in a crucial meeting with heads of various security agents in Aba, at the time of our correspondent’s visit to the school.