Nigeria campus gang beheads student, hacks another
Pastor Dale Morgan
Nigeria campus gang beheads student, hacks another*
26 Sep 2006 18:32:49 GMT
Source: Reuters
LAGOS, Sept 26 (Reuters) - A Nigerian campus gang chopped off the head
of one student, hacked another to death and injured another before
burying all three in a shallow grave, police said on Tuesday.
The attack on the students from Osun State Polytechnic, in southwestern
Nigeria, follows a grim trend of campus violence which has killed
hundreds of students in Africa's most populous nation in the past two
decades.
"The attackers must have thought they were all dead, so they tied them
together and dumped in a shallow grave, but one survived," a spokesman
for Osun state police said.
"The severed head has not yet been found."
The three victims are suspected members of a rival gang at the
polytechnic, which has been temporarily closed down to avert unrest.
University gangs, known locally as cults, have posed a deadly threat in
Nigeria's higher educational institutions since coming to prominence in
the late 1980s. They are often used by politicians to commit abuses at
election time.
Critics say standards at Nigerian universities, once regarded as among
Africa's best, have slumped so far that a sizeable proportion of
graduates are unemployable.
Many institutions are plagued by armed robbery, drug abuse and
prostitution.