Concerns as students’ clashes get messier in Ogbomoso … a student with severe machete cut last Friday (PHOTO & VIDEO)

Concerns as students’ clashes get messier in Ogbomoso … a student with severe machete cut last Friday (MORE PHOTOS) & VIDEO)

The menace of students’ clashes has become worrying in Ogbomoso as they continue to disturb the peace of the community and inflict injuries

Ben GEORGE

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It is time government and security agencies took meaningful steps towards combating the incessant violent clashes among students of secondary schools in Ogbomoso, Oyo state. Various flashpoints across the town have emerged, where students of rival schools engage one another in weaponized scuffles – former Odo Eran axis, Omoosin/Ora axis, Owode axis, Beulah axis, Kuye axis and so on. Rather than abating, the menace is getting out of hand. The photograph shown above was of a student attacked by fellow “students” with cutlass last Friday. The boy though is not innocent too; he only had a bad day! If that is happening in the third week of resumption of a new session, only God knows what lays ahead. That incident happened at Isale-Omoosin area among schools in that axis.

These students take pleasure in the fight; they are enthusiastic carrying weapons of all sorts including guns around seeking whom to fight and devour. It however should be noted that most of the gangsters have abandoned school, they are loafers, former students, dropped outs, idle and emerging area boys. These category of boys often swell the rank of the students to perpetrate these evils. Most of them possess uniforms of various schools to give the impression they are students of the schools whose uniforms they put on.

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But it seems the authorities – governments and security agencies and other stakeholders still treat the matter with levity; preferring to heap the blame on schools’ heads and teachers. The principals are regularly summoned by the police and ministry of education to lampoon them, that is the familiar path often toed. But the fact is that it is beyond the school’s management; are they expected to go and stop the hoodlums while brandishing weapons and throwing stones and cudgels?

At this stage, it is purely a government/security agents’ matter; they need to come up with measures to tackle the menace. It is time they took the bull by the horns. Teachers are to teach and mould lives, not to go head-to-head with criminal gangs bearing assault arms.

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These “home bandits” must be treated like criminals they are and their wings clipped. They disturb the peace of areas they engage themselves, destroy properties, injure innocent members of the public, disrupt economic and social activities etc. Worryingly also, they scare other law-abiding students away from school.

A resident of Omoosin, Mr. Alade Oladiran, in a viral video, lamented the problem saying they were tired of the incessant fights and thus called on relevant authorities to take action. “Government and security agents should come to our aid, before it turns more violent,” he pleaded.

VIDEO

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Is this an effect of free education? Or manifestation of failure in parenting? Or sanctioning of teachers who discipline students by government (because the new rule is that teachers cannot cane students)? Or depriving schools of managing promotion processes? Or perceived inadequate funding of schools? Or lack of adequate punishment for erring students (as these students often boast they won’t be made to face the music)? Or parents of apprehended students using religious clerics and other eminent personalities to intervene on the few occasions arrests are made? Or lack of serious commitment on the part of teachers? Etc.

There should be a way out and it must be found urgently.

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