Insecurity: Nigerian university hires hunters to protect campus, students’ hostels

Michael Pam (JOS) –

Worried by the growing security challenges facing Nigeria, authorities of the University of Jos have engaged the services of local hunters to protect students on campus and their hostels.

Out-going Vice-Chancellor of the university, Prof. Sebastian Maimako, made this known during a valedictory session organised on yesterday to mark the end of his five-year tenure.

According to Professor Maimako, “It is no longer news that the security situation in the country is quite tenuous.”

He said: “This is why under my administration, we made frantic efforts to ensure that all lives and property within the university are adequately protected.

“When we got a security report that we were the soft target, we close our hostels for almost two weeks and suspended lectures eventually.

“Before we could reopen, we were given a condition that we must employ the services of local hunters to help us secure our hostels, particularly at night.”

Of recent, a number of educational institutions, mostly in the northern part of Nigeria, have come under attacks by armed bandits, with hundreds of students forcefully abducted for random.

A number of students have also lost their lives in the hands of the bandits, including three student of the private-owned Greenfield University in Kaduna, North-West Nigeria.

The gunmen had attacked the university on April 20, 2021 in what was the fifth known attack on a school or college since December.

A member of the school staff was killed during the assault and the bodies of three students were later discovered in a nearby village.

Two university staff told AFP news agency that 20 students along with three non-academic staff had been kidnapped but state officials could not confirm those numbers, saying only that “an unspecified number” were taken.

In the series of such attacks on schools, gunmen had last month kidnapped many students from an Islamic school in the town of Tegina, Niger State (about 250 kilometres west of Nigeria’s capital, Abuja), seizing an unknown number of students from the institution.

A teacher however told the BBC that 150 students were missing, while other reports put the figure at about 200.

In February nearly 300 girls were taken by armed men from a boarding school in Jangebe, Zamfara state. Most were later freed.

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