What could have been a bloodshed was averted
at the Institute of Management Technology
(IMT) in Enugu State, last Monday. While activities
were at the peak on the campus, some
hoodlums, suspected to be secret cult members,
struck. There was pandemonium as everyone ran for dear life, turning the campus into a ghost
town. The cultists’ target, a witness said, was a burly
final year Mechanical Engineering student, who
was in a storey-building classroom when the
assailants arrived. The three-man gang isolated
their target from the crowd and pushed him to
the floor, pulling out their gun. The witness told CAMPUSLIFE that the suspected
cultists made attempts to shoot at their victim
but their gun could not discharge bullets. While this was going on, students, who were
around the building, ran in various directions.
Some, who were trapped in the classrooms on
the upper floor of the building, jumped down.
Many students got injured as they tried to
escape from the scene. Some girls, who could not run, stood dazed, watching the horror
scene. A student, who simply gave her name as Norah,
told CAMPUSLIFE that the assailants aimed at
their victim’s head but their gun’s trigger seized.
She said two of the cultists continued to hit the
victim with hard materials, while one of them
reloaded the gun. “When he was done, he made another attempt
to shoot at the victim, who was now bleeding
profusely, but the gun still could not discharge
bullets,” she said. When it dawned on the assailants that their
mission had failed, they fled the scene,
abandoning their victim in a pool of blood. The
cultists, CAMPULIFE learnt, escaped through
AfriHub Building, where they joined a waiting
car and drove out of the campus. One of the victim’s classmates, who pleaded
anonymity, said it was the second attack in the
building by secret cult members in one week. He said: “The cult members visited exactly a
week earlier. When they arrived in our class,
they brought out a gun and ordered everyone
to lie down. After a while, they ordered us to
raise our faces and looked around. When they
discovered that the person they were looking for was not in the class, they left. Now, they have
come back again to terrorise us in the class.
While all these happened, the school security
officers were nowhere to be found.” Another student, who also did not want his
name in print, said the school authorities
deployed Man O’ War cadets, more than 20
minutes after the assailants left the campus, to
harass students and search their bags. Investigation by CAMPUSLIFE showed that the
campus has become unsafe because of the
incessant attacks by cultists. A lecturer, who
simply gave his name as Mr Ugwu, said cult
clashes were becoming a common occurrence
in the school. It would be recalled that government had
recently embarked on “operation wipe out
cultism”, following cult clashes that led to the
death of students in Nsukka zone. The institution’s Director of Public Relations, Dr
Ifeanyi Ojobor, denied the incident when he
spoke to CAMPUSLIFE on telephone. He said: “I was on campus till the evening on
that day and I never heard of such cult attack.” But, students have appealed to the management
to strengthen the security on the campus. They
urged the authorities to equip the school
security officers to combat the growing violence
on the campus.