Photo: OAU students clash, six injured in the bloody fight

No fewer than six students were injured during a clash among some students of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, on Sunday evening.

According to eyewitnesses, the fight was a power tussle between loyalists of the President of the Student Union, Ibikunle Isaac, and those of the Vice-President, Oladejo Olufunmi, while others said it was a cult attack, but they all agreed that the clash was an aftermath of protest during President Goodluck Jonathan’s visit to the institution, Punch reports.

Vice-President of the Students Union, Funmi Oladejo said, 

"I was to have a meeting at the SUB yesterday (Sunday) around 6pm. On getting there, I met a student, Sanyaolu Oluwajuwon, inside the gutter, where he had been seriously beaten and I wondered what happened. After a while, the injured students went to show the injury to others and that enraged many students.
"Meanwhile, what started the fight, I heard, was that ERC were having its meeting when the President and the PRO passed through the place and saw them. He then called his boys to come, saying some people were having an opposition meeting at the SUB...
"After beating them up, they ran away except Teddy that waited. We later realised that those that ran to town went to hire cult members, who came with machetes.   We eventually caught four of them. Two were students and two were non-students.
"As far as I am concern, that is to mess up the whole issue. They want to make it a partisan stuff and that is out of sense. Our unionism is known to be independent and non-partisan. So, the case of Jonathan's visit was sardonic. They (Ibikunle’s faction) wanted to pay back the opposition that greeted Jonathan's visit."

The fight reportedly broke out shortly after the Education Rights Campaign members' meeting at the Students' Union Building when some union executive members, suspended students of the university, members of the Security Committee of the SU and ERC members disagreed.

One of the injured students - Tedy, was allegedly stabbed with a pointed a screw driver, while another student, David, had his head hacked with a machete, some other students were badly beaten.