By DANIEL Whyte

THE management of Federal University Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), Ekiti State, constituted a 12-member investigation panel, in reacting to the death of two students of the university during  protest against power outage in the university host communities.

This information was contained in an internal memorandum made available to this reporter on Thursday and signed by the Director of Administration, Olatunbosun Odusanya.

The mandate of the panel, according to the memo, is to investigate “the root causes” of the “students’ misdemeanour” and “to nip in the bud future occurrences”.

The committee is to be chaired by Abayomi Fasina, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor. Some of its other members include  P.O. Oladele; Paul Ogidi, the university Chief Security Officer; Dosu Malomo, the Dean of Students’ Affairs; Oyedokun Alli, head of General Studies (GST); and Chika Asoqwa, Head of Mass Communication.

This is coming in the wake of the death of two students of the university, who were shot following a protest against poor power supply on Tuesday.

Oluwaseyi Kehinde, a first-year student of Crop Science and Horticulture, was shot dead after a violent disagreement with security operatives on Tuesday evening, while Joseph Okonofua, a third-year student of Biology Education, was confirmed dead on Wednesday morning. He had sustained a gunshot injury to the stomach.

Following the protest, the institution had announced the indefinite shutdown of the university and the proscription of the students’ union and had ordered the students to immediately vacate the university’s premises.

Meanwhile, the university Public Relations Officer, Godfrey Bakji, has said he is yet to ascertain the identities of students that the university lost.

“If it is true that we lost a student, it is regrettable. But as we speak, I don’t even know the identity of the students in question which is why I have been skeptical about responding to it but if it is confirmed that we lost somebody in the fracas, it is quite unfortunate and it is regrettable,” he told this reporter.

Informed that one of the deceased students was from Faculty of Education, he said, “Be that as it may, the management wouldn’t be happy about what happened. So we condole with the parents and the friends and all his other relatives; it is just unfortunate that someone could die that way.”

“Whatever line of action the management would take, that one would come in due course, I am not privy to that yet,” he added.