Dad accuses Uniabuja over daughter’s death

Rufus-Ebegba accused the school authority of forcefully ejecting the deceased and her colleagues from the hostel and making her come from afar and detaining her in the school premises late into the night. But the management of the university through the Dean of Student Affairs, Dr. Peter Adakayi, has dissociated the university’authority from the death, […]

Rufus-Ebegba accused the school authority of forcefully ejecting the deceased and her colleagues from the hostel and making her come from afar and detaining her in the school premises late into the night.
But the management of the university through the Dean of Student Affairs, Dr. Peter Adakayi, has dissociated the university’authority from the death, adding that the university has not received any official letter from the deceased’s father over the incident.
Dr. Adakayi told Daily Trust that some students that were around at the time the accident occurred confirmed to the university that the deceased was crossing the road with earpiece in her ears, adding however that because death has occurred the school management doesn’t want to use that one as an excuse for what has happened.
He added that the measure to eject students from the hostel was taken to renovate the hostels for the incoming students but was later rescinded after appeal from some heads of department.
However, Afoke’s father in a petition addressed to the Ministry of Education and stamped with a received date of 6th Jan. 2015 with the title ‘How University of Abuja killed my daughter (Afoke Rufus-Ebegba), accused the school authority over the death of his daughter.
According to the petition, Afoke finished her final papers with other students and they were asked to vacate the hostel before project defense. He said she was invited after one month for the project defense without provision of accommodation which she had earlier paid for.
“My daughter had to be shuttling between the permanent campus in Giri and Gwagwalada, where she is squatting with a friend. On this note she had been going there every day (5 -7 November) without being attended to.
On how the varsity contributed to the death of Afoke, he said they did not allow her defend her project before requesting her to vacate the hostel and that after one month they invited her for the defense without providing accommodation for her.
He said prior to the death of his daughter, she had complained to him of the insensitivity of some lecturers of the varsity and that ‘she is the fifth student to have died at the spot where the accident took place.’
“Five children have died on that road under the same circumstances which is enough for the school to have taken some pragmatic steps to avert future occurrence. What I need is justice,” he insisted.
He urged that a committee should be constituted to investigate circumstances which led to his daughter’s death and the lecturers responsible for delaying her late into the night probed.
But the Dean Student Affairs said: “Renovation takes place before the new set of students comes in, it was on that basis that we asked them to vacate the hostels. It was not expected that anyone was staying back; but when the information came to our notice, heads of departments were asked to write the names of students staying back for defense and one month was given to them to use the hostels,” he said.
On the issue of delay, he said the external examiner didn’t have time to come at the scheduled time as he was abroad for a short trip, saying “the external examiner came when he was ready for the examination and that was not the fault of the university because you cannot change an examiner like that because you have already appointed the person.”