By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Jun 18 1999 (IPS)

The brutal murder of the Registrar of Nigeria’s Delta State University, Peter Otolo, by suspected cult students at his residence early this month, is worrying Nigerians.

Otolo was murdered along with his wife, who was shot in the legs. She died later in hospital.

Immediately after the incident, three of the suspected cult students were gunned down by a team of anti-crime police patrol they ran into. Five escaped, and are still at large.

Following the incident, a unit of anti-riot police has been deployed on the campus to maintain peace. So far, ten students, all suspected cult members, have been arrested in connection with the killing.

The incident followed the abduction in February of Professor Olatunji Oyeneye, Vice Chancellor of the Ogun state university, some 85 kms north-east of Lagos, by a group of students before he was rescued at Shagamu, some 40 kms from the campus.

The two incidents, at the Delta State University and Ogun State University, indicate that cult students have extended their attacks, originally confined to fellow students and rival cult members, to top university officials.

No week passes by, without newspapers reporting clashes between rival cult members, murder of students by cult members, arrest of cult members, suspension of students suspected to be members of cult groups in Nigeria’s 132 universities and colleges.

Last month about 67 undergraduates at Ogun State University, were arrested and quizzed by the police in Abeokuta, the main city in the state, for alleged cultism and for physically disrupting examinations on the campus.

Vice Chancellor, Oyeneye recently imposed a curfew from 10 pm to 6 am under a renewed war against cultism and warned that students investigated and found to be members of a cult group by the police would be prosecuted.

This week, 92 students suspected to be cult members at the Edo State University were expelled. The university’s Registrar, G. T. Olawale said the students were wanted by the police over secret cult activities.

Edo State University had earlier been shut down following the invasion of the campus by gun-totting secret cult gangsters, which resulted in the break down of law and order.

Eye-witnesses said the gangsters, who wore masks during the operation, emerged from a bush, shooting sporadically into the air and disrupting examinations.

Fed up of the spate of killings and harassments, officials at the Institute of Management and Technology in the eastern city of Enugu have arrested and expelled 5,000 students in the past five years.

According to Calistus Njeze, Rector of the institute, the arrests followed the introduction of “high-tech” security to detect cult members on campus.

The measures, he says, include the introduction of computerised identity cards for both workers and students which enabled the security officials to identify bogus students infiltrating the campus.

“We are poised to check the menace of cultism and examination fraud. We do not compromise standards,” he says.

According to Njeze, anyone found on campus without putting on the identity tag is arrested by security operatives to ascertain his or her identity or mission.

Professor Abubakar Sambo, Vice Chancellor of the Tafawa Balewa University in the northern city of Bauchi, says the increasing spate of cultism and examination malpractices pose a major threat to the survival of university education in Nigeria.

“The twin evils could affect the credibility of Nigerian university degrees among the community of nations. A university worth its name has no place for examination malpractices and cultism,” he says.

Scared of the practice, some parents have said they would not send their children to Nigerian universities.

“If I have my way, I will send my son to a neighbouring country for a university education. I can’t imagine him being killed by cult members in a Nigerian university,” says Patrick Olumide, a civil servant in the commercial capital of Lagos.

But Caroline Oluremi, herself a mother, believes cultism abounds in universities anywhere, but with varying degrees of anti-social activities.

“My children will surely take their degrees from Nigerian universities. Except for the anti-social activities of students presently, the universities here are very good academically. We don’t have to run away from Nigeria because of cults,” says Oluremi, whose son studies in one of Nigeria’s universities.

Unconfirmed reports say members of the cult group practice voodoo and other anti-social activities like beating up anybody seen talking to a female student in love with one of their numbers.

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