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Cultists threaten to assassinate new Uniben VC, principal officers
More articles on this topic: Campus Cults, NigeriaBENIN CITY—CULTISTS at the University of Benin (UNIBEN), Benin City, have written the Vice Chancellor of the university, Prof Emmanuel Nwanze, threatening to assassinate him, members of his family and some principal officers of the university if they do not discontinue their on–going attempts to fish out cultists in the institution and force them to renounce their membership.
But Prof Nwanze who is barely two months in office, called their bluff when he and other principal officers of the university , while addressing newsmen on the ugly development, weekend, swore an oath with the Bible, vowing to continue with their cleansing mission. The planned attack on the vice chancellor and his family by cultists has generated tension in the university with the police beefing up his personal security. At least, four plain clothed policemen were with him on Saturday while more were on surveillance duty in the school.
The cultists in their letter, dated April 5 to the vice chancellor, reminded him that his predecessor, Prof Abhulimen Anna did not play it hard on them and chided him for going as far as threatening to withdraw the certificates of cultists who had even graduated from the institution. The four-page handwritten letter, signed by an unknown cultist, who claimed to have graduated from the school in 1991, recalled the setting up of a Cult Renunciation / Reconciliation / Reform /Rehabilitation Committee, by Prof Nwanze shortly after two medical students of the university were killed and challenged him to produce any evidence that the deceased students were slain by cultists from UNIBEN. Positing that the vice chancellor was giving his enemies a chance to swoop on him, they said “we have all the information we need about you and your family. With sophistication and intelligence in confraternities, it will not take a week to find you and even if you elude us, your family will not be able to and even if they are able to, people working around you , even the Registrar and his family could also meet with an accident and government will certainly find where to lay their blame”.
Denying that cultists from the school were behind the recent killing of two medical students, one within and the other outside the campus, they drew his attention to the killing of about five members of the Anti–Cult Crusaders Organization of Nigeria (ACCON) of the Ambrose Ali University (AAU), Ekpoma, last year, saying that “this should be enough to warn you that what you are embarking on will only bring unrest and make your tenure infamous”. “This thing (cultism) is bigger than what you think because the high and mighty are involved.
Where do you think these boys get their sophisticated weapons from, who do you think will be bold enough to attack a governor’s convoy, who do you think politicians use in their elections – illiterates?”, they asked. The cultists urged the vice chancellor to take the threat letter seriously as “a lecturer in Uniben failed to take seriously this kind of letter we sent to him, where we appealed to him to allow one of our boys graduate and he met his untimely death. We will fight with all we have got if any of our boys , who is not guilty of what recently transpired is expelled. It may take a year, two, three years but it must be accomplished. We are totally against killings on campus, drugs, prostitution and unrest”.
They asked Prof Nwanze to immediately stop the Renunciation Committee and “initiate a move where the police and DSS will have unhindered access to the school and if anybody is caught, let them be made to face the law. Advise students of the school to always have their identity cards on them, search cars coming into the school, especially cars that belong to people who cannot identify themselves and they look very much like students”.
Prof Nwanze, however, stated that “we are not in a witch hunting exercise, we are not after anybody , we want to reform our children, we want to have this ugly phenomenon stemmed without violence. We want our children to return just like the prodigal son. Our desire is to rescue the lost sheep”, he said.
Commenting specifically on the threat letter, he said “I pray for you (the person that signed the letter), I am sure you have children and family and you are threatening my own children, I advise you to change, the university has resolved to fight cultism and we will reform those that will renounce it and protect them , that is all we are doing. We are not fighting anybody with arms , we just want to do it peacefully”.
He said he became determined more than ever before to fight cultism in the school when cultists killed a medical student at the College of Medical Sciences on March 9, pointing out that “that night, it was reported to me that a student was stabbed and I and some of my officials quickly ran to the place but by the time we got there, the student was dead, it was the ugliest sight in my life. The security personnel were called immediately, I learnt that it was an inter-cult war and that day, I made up my mind that this cannot continue, I now said that we cannot keep quiet and allow this gruesome nature of events to continue”
He asserted that “the University of Benin administration has identified , based on recent happenings in Nigerian universities that cultism is taking an unmanageable dimension” and after a thorough study, it decided to call on the people, teachers, parents and guardians of all students as well as students themselves to join the campaign for reform. “The idea is to counsel them on the way out of cultism in order to become good citizens. The university is not unmindful of the external factors and influences in the matter. Therefore, it is making a clarion call to all parents, guardians and all men and women of goodwill to come to the aid of the university in its determination to curb this menace in our university. “We will counsel the innocent and uninitiated ones on the need to avoid being lured into this ugly phenomenon and we will counsel the initiated and crooked ones to reform and be rehabilitated”, he said.
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