Rape video, death, erosion deface Abia varsity
Besides, the institution which prides itself as “God’s Own University”, must work hard to redeem its, some say, not-very-pleasant image caused by a recent rape video clip released by some mindless and callous rapists depicting a helpless, female student in tears, who was allegedly gang-raped by students on the campus. This is in addition to […]
Besides, the institution which prides itself as “God’s Own University”, must work hard to redeem its, some say, not-very-pleasant image caused by a recent rape video clip released by some mindless and callous rapists depicting a helpless, female student in tears, who was allegedly gang-raped by students on the campus.
This is in addition to the reported brutal murder of a 200 level student of Political Science of the university, Ekenna Sunday Ugochukwu, at the altar of the Okonko Cult allegedly by the Chief priest in Umuopara village, Mkpa, Bende Local Government Area of the state. Assistant Commissioner of police in charge of the state CID, Mr Micloth Joseph, who confirmed incident, also said the investigations into the matter was on-going, adding that the tragedy occurred soon after the new yam festival.
Although the rape incident depicted in the video clip caused wide criticisms and condemnations, both the Abia State Government and the authority of the university say repeatedly that the characters in the video were not ABSU students. The university officials said the producers of the video clip just wanted to pull down the institution for reasons best known to them (the rapists). Back to the devastation erosion that has wrecked the institution long before the 1990. Deputy Chief Engineer of the university, who took our reporter round some of the erosion sites, Engr. Orioha Raymond, said if the erosion menace on the campus is not adequately tackled, in future the university will probably lose assets that would cost up to N2billion to rebuild.
The deputy chief engineer said the Olusegun Obasanjo Staff Offices, the buildings housing the department of Humanities, old Business and Social Science block, and the emergency female hostels are all at the risk of being swept away by the deadly erosion. Besides, the erosion is also attempting to destroy the staff quarters, having first of all, pulled down some parts of the fence while encroaching fast into the soak-away (cesspit) inside the premises. As the reporter moved closer to photograph the deep, wide gully encroaching into the staff quarters, Orioha and his colleague expressed worry about the safety of the writer. “Please not go to close because the earth can cave in any moment and we cannot guarantee what will happen,” they told the reporter, who quickly retreated before snapping his shots.
The erosion sites reminded the reporter of his experience at Ire village in Obosi, Anambra State. Ire is the village of former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku. The erosion in Obosi is so destructive that villagers had to abandon their choice houses and escape for safety. Mr Frank Nweke Jnr was working in the presidency during ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration. He was in the ecological department of the presidency and he came to Enugu to pick select journalists with whom he visited Obosi and Ogbunike, Chuba Okadigbo’s community – communities where erosion has done unimaginable havoc to the earth and psyche of the people. Then this reporter was the Enugu Correspondent of the Daily Times newspapers. And our heart bled for both Obosi and Ogbunike. After the assessment tour, the impact of the visit is yet to be felt by the people. And the ABSU erosion sites just acted as a reminder of the Anambra erosion problems.
“As you can see, it will soon destroy the fence; after that, if it is not tackled, the erosion will then claim the main buildings. And to rebuild all these structures now will cost the university not less than N2billion,” Orioha said as he counted the buildings that are on the throes of the fast encroaching erosion. He explained further, “Two departments cannot be built in less than N600million, and if we add Olu Obasanjo’s building, we will be talking not less than N2billion to raise them from scratch.” Although he said the university has not suffered any human casualty caused by the erosion, he admitted that the calamity in terms of damaged structures experienced on the campus is better seen than imagined. “The path linking Lecture West, Department of Humanities to the School library has been cut off totally by the erosion since over 10 years. Four concrete make-shift bridges have been destroyed. Before the path was cut off, we used to connect the library within five minutes walk from the Humanities department but since after the cut-off of the path, we now walk round, trekking about 25 minutes to link the library,” he said.
According to him, even water pipes laid in the earth, electric poles, link roads and other facilities have all been badly destroyed by the erosion, which appears hell-bent on frustrating the efforts of the institution in controlling it. “The long stretch of bamboo trees you see was planted by the university to check the erosion menace,” said Orioha, as he pointed at the tall bamboo trees, some of them surrendering to the powerful, surging erosion. “It will cost the university a huge sum of money to reclaim the land lost to erosion. You can see, the devastation is quite enormous; an erosion of over 30 feet deep; you can imagine the destruction,” he added.
Our correspondent was reliably informed that last year during the administration of the former Vice Chancellor, Professor Mkpa Agu Mkpa, a team of surveyors and engineers and other officials of the Federal Ministry of Environment visited the institution from Abuja to do a thorough assessment of the havoc created on the campus by erosion, but up till the time of writing this report, nothing again was heard from the ministry.
“They spent up to a week in our guest house during which they filmed the erosion sites on the campus. But surprisingly, up till the time of your own visit now, we’ve not heard from them again. They said their reason for coming was to assess the sites and see what government can do to solve the problem,” our reporter was told.