Tough time for hooligans parading as students as authorities, concerned citizens take step
Yinka ADETUNJI
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Some concerned citizens in Ogbomoso have decided to take the bull by the horns, as they have taken a remedial step towards curbing the growing unrest among students of public secondary schools in the community. It is now common to see students engaged in violent clashes often disturbing peace in various communities especially in the neighbourhood of schools. The various flashpoints are areas of different schools’ clusters such as Ajegunle, Atenda/Sabo, Oke-Owode, Oke-Araada, Papa, Kuye/Under-G areas and so on. The public disturbance these miscreants parading as students imposes has reached intolerable level in recent time characterized by stone-throwing, brandishing of dangerous weapons such as axes, daggers and so on.
Meanwhile, their cup seems to have overflowed hence the coming together of a few patriots to salvage the situation. “The students have constituted themselves into a menace,” one of the concerned citizens, Mr. Sunday Oladiran, a.k.a. Coach, who lives in the Baaki/Moboluwaduro area, told ogbomosoinsightonline.com.
“Students from schools in that axis often fight, they would be throwing stones, using dangerous weapons, disturbing the peace of the area. We tried to caution them but to no avail. Recently, they smashed the windscreen of a car while they were fighting and also hit a cleric with stone in the eyes, that was when we raised a task force to combat their menace, and at a time one of them even brought out a gun which we found out later belonged to his father, he was subsequently arrested and handed over to the police. At another time one of them was severely macheted in the head which landed him in a hospital.
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“We are fed up and it’s the reason we took the latest step, which is supported by some communities and some of the schools’ authorities. Our strategy is to create public awareness using a mounted van to warn students who don’t stay in school to desist, that anyone apprehended would be handed over to security agents.This will also alert their parents and make them increase the monitoring of their children.”
Also, Akorede Ishola a.k.a. Laskongo, who was also in the taskforce disclosed that they found out many of the students who engage in the fracas are not bonafide or regular students. “Our investigations revealed that many of the so-called students are truants,” Ishola said. “They leave their parents and guardians’ homes but don’t enter school, they will just be loitering about, and sitting at different bases to strategize on how to cause troubles. They are either students who had repeated a class because of their truancy in the past or those who had registered while in SS 1 or SS 2 for external exams at another school.
“They won’t enter schools’ premises though they don uniforms and some of them have different schools’ uniforms, which they wear interchangeably to disguise when causing problems thereby giving schools a bad image. We learnt that such miscreants if they even have names in the schools’ registers they have zero attendance. But we can’t allow this to continue, they endanger our lives too.
“Those of us who live in the vicinity of these schools often when they start their useless fights are imperiled, hence our resolve. I have a child in one of the schools; the last time there was a disturbance he ran home breathing heavily after escaping from the scene of the fracas, why should a few be troubling hundreds of others?” he queried, while soliciting the cooperation of everyone in rooting out the menace. Also, he charged residents to unite in driving students roaming around back into the school stressing “if such students have no hiding places in the vicinity they will stay in school or at home rather than causing crisis but the moment they are left alone or harboured by the people in the neighbourhood maybe because of what they will sell to them the menace will persist.”
Ogbomoso Insight gathered that last week security agents in their numbers raided the vicinity of schools, an operation which recorded various degrees of successes as some of the suspected thugs in schools’uniforms were apprehended.
“Government is the one that can really root out or reduce the peril. We have had cases teachers ventured out to drive back to school such unruly students but they were attacked with weapons, in fact, there is a particular teacher who suffered broken leg as he was pushed by such students while trying to control them and since then, about five months now, he is still on crutches. If the government wants it stopped it would. Teachers are in reality incapable of stopping the threat, it is security agents that can,” a commentator remarked while speaking with Ogbomoso Insight. This is as it is noted that the restive students have gone into hiding now “but that is the usual scenario, after one, two weeks, and the heat subsides they will return to continue in their nefarious activities: drugs, betting, alcohol, sex and such orgies. The only way the situation can be salvaged is if the heat on them is vigorously sustained. The law against loitering must be enforced strictly.”
