| I was reliably informed that students of the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus held a violent protest over poor power supply last night. Read how an eye witness report of the incident: Last night was unlike other nights. Well, a few things happened like other nights. The school generator was ignited by the normal 7:00pm. Students scurried to their rooms to get their clothes ironed, to power their phones up to at least one bar, to watch the last episode of Game of Thrones. They scurried because even the rats knew that by 9:00pm, the lights would go off and would be taken to the other hostels that didn't have light by 7:00pm. This has been a tradition within the campus lately. A tradition of sharing light among the 7 hostels in UNEC. The result of this, has been that each hostel gets to have light for only 2 impoverished hours every day. Let me put this in perspective, out of 24 hours, a student of UNEC gets power supply for merely 2 hours. 2 hours to charge phones, iron clothes, get aeration, charge laptops for the different projects and term papers he has been given. The rest of the 22 hours, a UNEC student spends fantasizing about the next 2 hours he would get the next day. Fire was discovered thousands of years ago, but UNEC students live like early men, like cave men. Last night when the customary outage of light by 9:00pm came, it did not come without a backlash. Not just a backlash. Students in the famous Kenneth Dike hostel began shouting from their rooms, throwing garbage down the stairs, a rather rustic way to begin a peaceful protest. Next, they became a mob Angry and charged, they stomped out of the hostel, and the protest began. Students from the Mbonu Ojike hostel joined. Together they marched to the Manuwa bustop. Seeing their rage, the generator people had to cut power entirely, fearing for their own safety. The mob marched to the Staff Quarters, to the DVCs house, that of the Dean of Students' Affairs. Nobody was home. Discontented, they marched to the school gate, nearly pulled down the sculpted lion in front of the gate along with the bold inscription: To Restore the Dignity of Man. This was students taking their dignity by force, by their own hands. They obstructed traffic in front of the school gate. Soon, security operatives came begging the students to go back into school. An hour later, the students had retired into their hostels, breathing off the steam of an angry and successful protest and telling stories of how it went, and how in other universities, students paid less school fees and yet enjoyed steady power supply. In all, the protest went successfully, except that some students used that opportunity to sexually harass many female students. An act of cowardice in the midst of such a show of bravery. The protest soon died down and gave way to the cool passage of the night breeze. The next day. Today. There are police officers in front of the gate, looking suspiciously at any and every student. I hope they see light to charge their walkie-talkie phones. I hope they see light, especially if they stay till nighttime and are caught in the midst of what some students are calling the bloodiest protest to come if the school authorities don't do something about the power problem. Now, there are rumors that the VC is irate and has vowed to shut down the campus if another protest occurs. For now, the students are sparing no comments on that. There are firecrackers and matches they need to hide well before night time. |
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