From Zara Nwachinaemere, Abakaliki
Five students of the Ebonyi State University, EBSU, on Wednesday, collapsed at the permanent site campus of the institution during a stampede.
The ugly incident happened when students in their large number rushed to access the school’s ICT centre where their General Studies Programme, GST, examination was to be written.
According to some of the students who spoke to our correspondent, they stated that the hall for the examination was too small for the mammoth crowd of students that were to write the course.
They added that all the students from the four campuses that make up the University were told to come to the ICT centre to write the exam. This is even as the institution had adopted the Computer Based Test (CBT) for some General Studies (GST) courses.
One of them narrated the experience: “There was poor planning of the exams. The hall had just about 500 computers and the students to write the exams were over 1000”.
“The University administration should have separated the students so that the hall will not be crowded but they failed to do so.
“Today’s exams have again exposed the sorry state of our state University. Many students did not take part in the examination and only 15% of Ebsu students wrote the exam.
“Knowing fully well that a one room apartment which was paraded as an ICT centre cannot accommodate all the students of the institution to write GST 101 and 102”.
“They should’ve typed these exams and made photocopies so as to get to all the students but didn’t because they paraded today’s exam to be a computer based one”.
“At about 4:15, the invigilators came out to announce that the exam which has been written at Midway has been cancelled.
“The worst part of it was that there was no Medical centre to rush these students who were already struggling for survival to”.
The SUG President, Abanni Samson described the incident as totally avoidable
He said: “As leaders and firstly students, the SUG share in the pain of all EBSU students and on this note we assure everyone that never again will EBSU students under our leadership be made to go through such horror in the name of writing any exam or undertaking any academic activity including experiences with the consultancy unit of the university”.
“The planning could have been better, to prevent the mayhem that was recorded today. I am personally sorry for all who got hurt in any way.”
He implored the students to remain calm until confirmation is made over the rumored death.
Mr Abanni said the SUG will be meeting with the GST management immediately to ensure that a repeat does not occur.
