Gov’t Closes Uyo High School Over Cultism . . . Students Give Principal 24hrs ultimatum Over Detained Members
3 min read
by Ben Goodnews
The Akwa Ibom State Government on Thursday, June 24th, 2021 ordered the immediate closure of Uyo High School, Uyo over students’ cult activities.
Commissioner for Education, Mrs Idongesit Etiebe, gave the order in order to forestall a breakdown of law and order after a rival cult war in the school.
BochNews gathered that during the rival cult war, the students threw stones at the glass house of a filling station located around the school environment and destroyed it.
The closure was said to have been triggered by the principal, Mr Michael Etuk’s arrest and detention of some students believed to be cultists and had unleashed mayhem in the school at the police headquaters, Ikot Akpanabia, Uyo .
Six of the detained students are still remanded in the police as the time of filing this report.
Angered by the action of the principal, Mr Michael Etuk, some members of the cult group stormed his office in June 24th and dropped some fetish objects at the entrance, which included fresh palm fronds, red piece of cloth, whitish objects and a bottle containing black liquid hung on the wall.
The gangsters also pasted notes at both sides of the wall which read; “We give you 24-hours to release our boys or we fall you. Remember we know your house, children and wife, Iwok close.
“Mr. Principal we always defend you, but you are fighting us. We wash our hands off your case, we fight for you no more.”
When our correspondent visited the school premises, the principal was not present, but the warning notes were still conspicuously on the walls while the fetish objects were still there
However, the Commissioner for Education, Mrs Idongesit Etiebet directed the chairman, State secondary school board, Dr.Ekaette Ebong to shut down the school indefinitely to allow normalcy return to the school.
When the Commissioner of Education, Mrs Etiebet, was contacted, she simply responded with a text message, ” I’m in a meeting, I have directed the chairman secondary education board to temporarily close down the school”.
The school is said to be notorious for cult war on weekly basis, but the one that occurred two weeks ago had a Mobil filling station, located opposite the school attacked.
The manager of the filling station, Mrs Mbereobong Elijah, told our correspondent that an incident happened two weeks ago in the school and students were running into the premises of the filling for escape.
She said they all came out to see what was happening and to plead with them to stop fighting each other, adding that as they were pleading they got annoyed and started throwing stone at the glass windows.
According to her, they shattered the glasses and destroyed one of the dispensers of the filling station.
She said ” Two weeks ago, cult members were fighting in the school. Some of them ran to take cover in our premises. We pleaded with the group already in our premises to stop but as we were pleading we heared stones on our glass door so we had to run inside for our safety.”
