About 26 students of Baptist High School, Gbodofon, Osogbo, Osun State capital, were on Thursday suspended by the school authorities over their involvement in cultism and other immoral activities including locking up their teachers in the school premises.
Though the teachers in the school declined to comment on the issue, CEOAFRICA news desk gathered that the affected students, apart from being members of a cult group, were said to have committed several atrocities, including locking up their teachers within the school premises for hours.
The development came just as three students of Government Technical College, Osogbo, were also apprehended by the operatives of the Department of State Security (DSS), on Friday, over cultism, while one member of the cult escaped arrest.
Sources informed CEOAFRICA that the management of Government Technical College, Osogbo, decided to hand over the arrested students to DSS owing to fear that they might secure their release if taken to the police.
Commenting on the suspension of the students, the state chairman, Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), who also doubles as the chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) in Osun State, Comrade Saka Adesiyan, contended that the suspension letters issued to the students would serve as deterrent to others.
He said that it was disheartening that different anti-social groups, including secret cults, were springing up in public secondary schools in the state, coupled with gross indiscipline among students, thereby denting the image of public schools.
The state chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in its reaction, blamed the state government for what it called the lawlessness in public schools in the state, maintaining that the suspended 26 students had no business being in that school.
The party’s head of legal team, Chief Sunday Ojo Williams told newsmen that if the Aregbesola administration had listened to the voice of reason and stopped the merging of public schools the current lawlessness in the schools would not have occured.
