PDP Knocks Benue Varsity Management Over Suspension Of Protesting Medical Students 

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Benue State has taken a swipe at the decision of the management of the Benue State University, BSU, to suspend the medical students of the College of Health Sciences of the institution for protesting over poor welfare and lack of amenities in the college.

It was reported that the medical students had on October 25, 2023, staged a peaceful protest at the Benue Government House to seek the governor’s attention to their plight.

However, the management of the institution on October 30, 2023, slammed a one-month suspension on all the 200 to 600 level Medical Students with an order that the returning students tendered affidavits assuring to be of good behaviour as well as undertakings from their parents and guardians affirming the same.

Reacting to the development, the PDP in a statement issued Thursday in Makurdi by its Publicity Secretary, Bemgba Iortyom noted that the decision to suspend the students for embarking on a peaceful protest was not only condemnable but unfortunate.

The party said, “The medical students who had gone to Government House to peacefully air their grievances to the governor were allegedly brutalized and subsequently suspended by the university authority.”

“Protests and agitations are rights of citizens which are enshrined in law and previous governors of the state handled them through civil negotiations and where the courts intervened, their judgements were complied with by the government,” PDP aversed.

The statement recalled that students in the 90s under the aegis of National Union of Benue State Students, NUBESS, had successfully resisted attempts by the military government to scrap their annual bursary allowance, stressing that it was achieved through protests and negotiations with the then Military Administrator.

The party also recalled that both George Akume and Gabriel Suswam during their separate times as governors had to go to the BSU campus to address protesting students who demanded to see them over their grievances.

The party urged Governor Hyacinth Alia to toe the same path and take steps to fulfill the promises he made to the people during the campaigns.