By Christian George
Some military personnel attached to the Army Supply and Transport Barracks, Ugbowo, Benin City, Edo, who was said to have allegedly assaulted a University of Benin student at the ATM point luckily escaped being lynched by angry students, yesterday.
Eyewitness report has it that the army was engaged in a dispute with the student in whose turn to withdraw cash from the machine as an aftermath of the personnel leveraging on his uniform to bypass the students who had waited long on queue to withdraw cash.
Report also has it that soldiers had come to the same spot on Wednesday and harrased students with the view to making withdrawals immediately and even had to command a student who challenged them to queue up to lie down and face the floor.
“But yesterday (Thursday) when they came again and wanted to do the same thing, the student resisted them,” an eyewitness who did not want his name mentioned said.
the chief security officer of the institution came to resolve the matter but eyewitness added that the CSO got assaulted by the soldiers. This led to the already tensed students to pounce on the force men with one of them sustaining injury.
This act led to the blocking of roads including Ugbowo-Lagos Expressway and halted vehicular movements for several hours, as all routes leading to and fro the UNIBEN main gate were stalled in protest against the soldiers’ action.
However, some spirited Nigerians and the Deputy Police Officer, DPO, Ugbowo division appeased the irate students to allow movement around the axis.
