THE University of Benin (UNIBEN) has shut down academic activities indefinitely, following a protest by students of the institution over poor power supply.
This was contained in a statement by the school’s Public Relations Officer (PRO), Benedicta Ehanire, on Thursday.
“Following the insistence of students of the University of Benin (not) to shift grounds on their demands for twenty-four hours supply of electricity and more, considered unrealistic by the University’s Senate, the University has shut down academic activities indefinitely.
“Students are to vacate the hostels immediately while all the relevant units of the university are to take note and comply. However, non-teaching staff and staff on essential duties are not affected by the shut down,” the statement read.
Students of the institution had taken to the streets of Benin on Wednesday, July 3, carrying placards and blocking the Benin-Ore highway in protest against weeks of power outage on campus.
With only two weeks to their first semester examinations, the students stated that the situation was having adverse effects on preparations for the examinations.
“We only had one hour of electricity every day since this issue started. We are tired of studying in the dark. We need electricity to read and prepare for our exams. The university management needs to take responsibility and fix this issue,” John Afolabi, one of the protesting students was quoted as saying.
The power outage began after the university failed to reach an agreement with the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) over a contentious electricity bill.
The BEDC reviewed the institutions monthly electricity bill upward by over 200 per cent forcing the school to turn to generators and rationalising power supply.
The students, however, disclosed that they only got electricity for an hour a day, leaving them to study in the dark.
The institution’s Senate threatened to shut down activities on Wednesday, if dialogue between the protesting parties and the authorities failed to yield positive results.
Ijeoma Opara is a journalist with The ICIR. Reach her via [email protected] or @ije_le on Twitter.