Outrage was palpable on Thursday as one of the slain students of the Federal University of Oye Ekiti (FUOYE), Oluwaseyi Kehinde, was buried in Usi Ekiti in Ido Osi Local Govt, Ekiti State.
According to Punch, the atmosphere was sombre as fellow students, friends and family members bewailed the killing of the 100-level student of Crop Science and Horticulture.
Footage of the church funeral service posted on social media showed a relative of the deceased standing beside the coffin as he sang a dirge.
“You have caused great sorrow, you have caused great pain. You who killed Kehinde without allowing him to grow up, you have caused great sorrow,” the relative sang, as his voice was drowned by the heavy wailing of women and men surrounding the coffin.
The Secretary General of the FUOYE Students Union Government, Mohammed Iliyas, said Kehinde’s burial was witnessed by his parents.
“We even requested that the corpse be kept for a while so that we could give him a befitting burial, but the parents insisted; that the funeral must be immediate,” he added.
The victim was one of the two students allegedly shot dead by policemen attached to the Ekiti State Police Command during a demonstration over power outage on the campus of the institution.
Tuesday’s protest had ended around 2pm without any incident until the students allegedly had a confrontation with the cops attached to the convoy of the wife of the state governor, Bisi Fayemi.
Kehinde and Joseph Okonofua were allegedly gunned down by the policemen, while two others, who were injured, were admitted to hospital.
Punch reports that the President of SUG of FUOYE, Oluwaseun Awodola, said the police shot dead Kehinde and Okonofua, a 300-level student of Biology Education.
Meanwhile, the FUOYE Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Kayode Soremekun, on Thursday, approved the constitution of an investigative panel to look into the protest and the reported attack on the governor’s wife.
Soremekun confirmed the approval for the setting up of the panel in a telephone chat with journalists in Ado Ekiti.
An internal memorandum signed by the Director of Administration, Olatunbosun Odusanya, to the VC, states, “The VC may wish to recall the recent students’ misdemeanour of September 10, 2019, and the consequent expanded management meeting, where it was resolved that an investigative panel must be set up to investigate the root causes of this action and to nip in the bud future occurrences.”
The memo, entitled: ‘Constitution of investigative panel’, suggested a 12-member committee to be chaired by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Abayomi Fasina, with representatives of the police, Department of State Services, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps and the National Association of Nigerian Students.