Before they knew what was happening, some
men were at their door and expectedly, they
forced the door open.
“Come out now or we will kill you!”
With fear and trembling, Bimbola and her
roommate did their bidding.
Three hefty fearful-looking men, clad in black
polos and jeans, armed with guns, machetes and
axes
had stormed their hostel – located in the Under
G Area of Ladoke Akintola University of
Technology, Ogbomoso, Oyo State – and
demanded that all the students, both male and
female, should gather in one room.
While one of the hoodlums stayed with the
students, pointing guns at them should they
‘misbehave,’ the other two locked the entrance to
the hostel, ransacked all rooms one after the
other, stole the students’ laptops, money, debit
cards, tablets and mobile phones.
But even after stealing all their property, the
robbers were not done. The next command they
gave the students was what Bimbola has not yet
gotten over with.
She narrated her painful, unimaginable and
dehumanising ordeal to PUNCH Metro in a very
tearful interview last Monday. The dry white
handkerchief she was holding was soaked with
tears after trying to stop weeping for a while, but
couldn’t resist it.
She told Punch:
“They raped some girls in our presence, but not
only that, they asked us to start having s.ex with
ourselves. They called from among us a guy and
a girl and asked them to have s.ex with
themselves, right in everybody’s presence. They
threatened to use their weapons on us if we
didn’t cooperate.
Then they asked all of us to strip naked. Since it
was in the night, most of us ladies already had
only our night gowns on, while most of the guys
were just putting on boxers. They said we
should all be naked. When they were satisfied,
they called another pair of students to do the
same thing and told everybody to watch.
For about three hours, they dehumanised us,
humiliated us. Unfortunately, nobody in the
next hostel knew what was going on; if anyone
knew, they would have helped us to call the
police or the Student Union Government
officials.”
But what was more pathetic about Bimbola’s story
was that she didn’t just witness the whole action;
she was also asked to have sex with a guy she
never dated.
“Everything happened like it was a dream. They
pointed at a guy I knew as my junior and asked
him to do ‘it’ with me. When I refused, they
slapped me and I fell. I had no option than to
do it. I looked at my roommate and she was
already shedding tears for me. How humiliated
I was!” she cried.
She continued:
“It was not a night to remember. I wish I could
erase it from my memory. My friend and I
returned to the hostel that night after reading
in the school because our exam is fast
approaching. If I knew something like that
would happen, I would have stayed in the
school till the morning, but I needed to prepare
for the following day’s work. I had just finished
having a shower when my roommate and I
observed something was wrong. There was no
light, so we couldn’t see properly, but we
observed that our hostel mates were all
jamming their doors at some men’s command.
“They cramped all of us in one of the rooms
upstairs and we were all frightened. My parents
are not yet aware of this incident and I don’t
wish to share it with anyone again. I only
agreed to speak to you because my friend here
encouraged me to and I feel something should
be done by the authorities concerned to stop
this barbarism. I know I’ll be fine soon.”
Since July when they resumed for the semester,
the students of LAUTECH have been witnessing
robbery attacks and rape by the same set of
unknown men – who call themselves ‘Three
MOPOLs’ each time they barge into their victims’
hostels.
Though the institution is non-residential,
individuals and private organisations provide
accommodation for the students around the
university.
An official of the institution, with whom some of
the victims and eyewitnesses had shared their
ordeal with, told Saturday PUNCH that they
confided in him saying they were asked to have
se.x with other female students during the
robbery operations.
“I believe it is more than what meets the eyes.
This is not an ordinary robbery. Normal robbers
take what they want and leave. They would not
ask students to all be in one room, tell them to
go unclad, rape the female ones and still tell
their victims to have se.x with one another. It is
a disgusting thing and as a parent myself, I have
been unhappy since I started hearing the bad
experiences of some of our students,” he said.
The President of the SUG of the institution,
Olatunde Bakare, said he had been personally
leading a team of student vigilantes since July
due to the alleged nonchalant attitude of the
police and the school management previously.
The Public Relations Officer of the institution, Mr.
Lekan Fadeyi, said the insinuation that the
university management didn’t do anything on the
rape and robbery incidents was far from the
truth. He said the school had, before the
incidents, teamed up with landlords of students’
hostels in hiring security officials to patrol the
hostels.
He, however, said it was a challenge providing
security for the over 4,000 students of the
institution, being a non-residential one.
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