SECURITY ALERT WITH JIDE

Police, UNILAG students clash again.

The five-day old protest by students of the University of Lagos, over the change of its name to Moshood Abiola University, Lagos, nearly degenerated into violence as the police and students clashed, leading to a first year female student being nearly choked to death by smoke from canisters of tear gas thrown  into the instititution by policemen.
This is even as the suit challenging the change of name comes up before the Federal High Court on June 17.
According to sources, some miscreants had capitalised on the protest along Yaba road and started to forcefully collect money from motorists, a situation that drew the attention of the policemen posted to the area to quell the situation before it escalated.
The situation however degenerated to a level where the policemen pursued the protesters to UNILAG where they threw tear gas at them to disperse them, just as the students threw stones at the police operatives.
One Tolulope, a fisrt year, Sciences student who was at the scene said: “As we were planning to go out for protest this morning, our leader told us to converge at the school gate and not to cause trouble.
Suddenly, the policemen that had been following us since Tuesday when we started the peaceful protest divided into two groups.
Commissioner of Police in charge of Operations in Lagos State, Tunde Sobulo, however denied any wrong doing by the police saying the female student slumped on her own.
He explained: “We have been here since midnight, but all of a sudden, some students started leaving the campus to Herbert Marcauley road, blocking the road and started collecting money from motorists and forcing them to put  green leaves on their cars as sign of solidarity with them.
These were the people we pursued to the university gate. On sighting us, the students thought we were after them, hence, they started throwing stones at us.