…wield guns, machetes, sack Principal, teachers from school over colleagues’ death during gambling
Bankole Taiwo, Abeokuta
Commercial activities as well as vehicular movements were on Monday, paralysed in some parts of Abeokuta metropolis, when Secondary School Students of two public schools engaged each other in a violent attack over death of two of their colleagues killed during an unofficial inter-schools’ gambling competition in the Ogun State capital.
The incident, which occurred in the mid – afternoon of Monday, involved Senior Secondary students of the Baptist Boys High School (BBHS), Saje, Abeokuta, who invaded the Ilugun High School located within the Federal Housing Estate (FHE), in Saje axis of the metropolis to avenge the death of their colleagues’ allegedly stabbed to death in the previous week.
Our Correspondent reliably gathered that the BBHS students, who were armed with guns, cutlasses, broken bottles and assorted charms among other dangerous weapons, invaded Ilugun High School and started shooting sporadically in every direction and chanted anti-management songs to warn the principal and teachers to stay off.
The development forced teachers and students of the school to run in different directions so as not to be caught up in the crisis, which later spread to all adjourning streets of the metropolis.
Shop owners, who had earlier opened for businesses, also hurriedly closed down and scampered for safety, while vehicles and commuters also deserted the area for fear of being affected by the incident.
One of the shop owners in the area, who managed to return after security operatives had taken over, told our Correspondent that students of the two schools were last week, involved in gambling, with the students of BBHS winning so much than their colleagues in Ilugun High School.
The gambling was however said to have degenerated into a conflict, wherein two BBHS students were stabbed with broken bottles.
He explained that “one of the BBHS students stabbed died last Friday, while the second one died yesterday Sunday. But the students of BBHS were not happy about the incident and that was why they came out in violent protest against students of Ilugun High School today.”
When contacted, the state’s Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Abimbola Oyeyemi confirmed the incident, adding that the command had deployed security operatives to the area to restore sanity.