Akwa Ibom Poly Students Protest Alleged Police Extortion As CP Wade In

Students of the Akwa Ibom State Polytechnic (Akwa Poly), Ikot Osurua, and Ikot Ekpene Local Government Area have protested against daily police extortion.

Several students who could no longer bear what they said was a culture of road blockades to extort them organised other students to stage the protest even as they lamented that there was growing insecurity without action from the police.

The protest was triggered by a complaint by a female student who had alleged in a video that she and her female friends were harassed on their way to the hostel by the police, who seized their phones and searched them against what the police authority had said.

Recall the police authority had warned against phone searching, which it said is outside the mandate of the force.

She complained in the video that “we are no longer safe,” adding she was detained by the police till midnight and was forced to part with N10,000 for not committing any offence.

The protest was led by the Student Union (SUG) president, Comrade Geoffrey George, who gathered at the school gate at 8 a.m. with different placards with inscriptions such as ‘End police brutality now’, ‘protect, save, don’t abuse’, ‘This Extortion Must Stop’, among others.

Speaking, the SUG president, Comrade George, recalled how students have suffered at the hands of police and hoodlums within the community.

He said, “Last week, there was a trending video on social media where a student of the institution was brutalised and dragged to the ground by policemen.

“Students face extortion by policemen in Ikot Ekpene. We are not safe, especially those students living in the communities within the school environment.

“Hoodlums snatch phones from students and even kill them. We have buried more than five students in the last year.

“They were killed by thieves who broke into their houses, collected their phones and killed them while police looked the other way,” he lamented.

One of the student activists who spoke on condition of anonymity said the protest must continue to draw government attention to the plight of students in the institution.

“Nobody will stop us. We must cry out for the world to know that the police are not helping us here. Our colleagues are dying while they are busy extorting money from poor students.”

However, the Police Public Relations Officer for Akwa Ibom (PPRO) DSP Timfon John, while reacting to the incident, said the state Commissioner of Police Baba Mohammed Azare has invited the students to a meeting to resolve all issues affecting them.

“The Commissioner of Police, Baba Azare, has invited the students to a meeting this morning. We are waiting for them to come. There would be no protest.

“Those students you saw at the school gate this morning are preparing to come for the meeting with the Police Commissioner.”

Akwa Ibom Poly Students Protest Alleged Police Extortion As CP Wade In is first published on The Whistler Newspaper