Dazan Charity Oluwabukola (January 9, 1989 – February 10, 2016).
Yaba College of Technology (YabaTech) students were writing practical exams when a final year student died under very disturbing circumstances.
Dazan Charity Oluwabukola, 27, was a student of the Department of Office Technology Management (OTM).
She reportedly passed on around 2:00 a.m. on Wednesday after YabaTech medical centre and the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Ebute Metta apparently played ping pong with her life. She had taken ill the day before.
Minutes after learning of her death later that morning, the head of department (HOD) for OTM, Mrs P. Ogadi, insisted the exams scheduled for the day must go on.
OTM lecturers and students were present when Ogadi made the comments, we gathered. Most of them said they were shocked to the bone to hear their HOD, herself a mother, make such ‘heartless’ comment.
Here’s what a student told us she said:
Everyone should calm down. We know we have lost someone very dear to us, and we all know that death is inevitable. We just pray we should grow old. But Dazan has just ended her journey. Don’t let that bother you. That will not disturb the exam. The exam must go on.
OTM HOD, Mrs P. Ogadi (left) with the Multilingual Class coordinator during YabaTech protest on Wednesday, February 10.
The school’s deputy rector for academic affairs also allegedly expressed the same lack of empathy.
A female lecturer had attempted interrupting Ogadi but she shut the objecting lecturer down with a dismissive wave of the hand, we were told.
About 15 minutes later, Ogadi summoned all HND1 and ND1 students into a hall for an Information Communication Technology (ICT) exam.
While students were protesting, these OTM students were confined to what they later called a ‘psychologically tormenting examination.’
They didn’t get out of the hall until 5:00 p.m. One of them spoke to NewsroomNG minutes after she left the exam hall.
‘Yes, we just finished ICT5 exam,’ she said.
‘I was not in the right frame of mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about the unrest as I heard shouts upon shouts from protesting students.
‘It was very disturbing,’ she said.
All the while: Dazan was buried; students from all over campus were protesting; and the medical center was vandalised.
‘I must be honest with you, I don’t know what came over her,’ another student said concerning the HOD’s apparent lack of empathy.
‘She has been a good mother to us but what she said was so shocking and unbelievable.’
YabaTech later suspended academic activities for four weeks after the unrest spiralled out of control.
This post first appeared on Newsroom.ng
by hotdropz