INTER SCHOOL CLASH: Student’s Finger Cut Off

An SS1 student of Surulere High School, Eric Moore, Surulere, Lagos, southwest Nigeria, Yinka Oyedele, is now on the run after he allegedly attacked a JSS3 student of Eric Moore Secondary School, Surulere, and chopped off his finger.

The cause of the clash which resulted in the permanent disability of the victim, Ridwan Shittu, could not be ascertained.
But sources within the two schools told a a witness that crises of supremacy has been brewing between the senior students of Eric Moore Secondary School and Surulere High School for a long time and that the two school managements are aware of it, but they could not find solution to it.
On the day of the incident last Friday, sources said scores of senior students of Surulere High School allegedly armed with machetes and other weapons invaded Eric Moore Secondary School on a reprisal attack on their senior counterparts who allegedly attacked them a week earlier and injured one of them on the head.
It was gathered that, prior to the attack, the two school managements got wind of the crises and invited the police to provide security, yet the invading students still attacked the junior ones who were on their way home with cutlasses and wooden planks.
Narrating his ordeal, Shittu, 15, a JSS 3 student of Eric Moore Secondary School said: “I was going home after our school had closed with my friends on Friday when some students led by Yinka Oyedele from Surulere High School suddenly attacked me and others with cutlasses and in the process cut off my left hand thumb.
“I write with my left hand, and I am now going to start learning how to write with my right hand which will be very difficult for me. We did not know why the senior students were fighting for.
“The senior students of my school and those of Surulere High School have been clashing for long for undisclosed reasons.
“On the day of the incident, my school management ordered the senior students to vacate the school premises unknown to us that something was about to happen.
“When we were about leaving the school premises to go home, we saw policemen on the street and we did not suspect anything until we were attacked by machete-wielding students within the school vicinity. I am now calling on the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, to compel the school management to restore my hand because if they had told us to vacate the school premises like others I would not have suffered this permanent disability.”
The father of the victim, Mr. Taiwo Shittu said: “When I received a phone call about the incident, I rushed down to the scene and found my son’s finger dripping with blood with his thumb cut off. I quickly rushed him to the Bode Thomas Police Division where they issued me a paper to take him to the hospital for treatment. My greatest regret is that, since the incident occurred, the two principals of the schools have not shown any concern or attempt to officially report the matter to the police to enable them arrest the culprit.
“They treated me badly because I am a poor man. But if the victim is the child to an elite, by now solution would have come. They knew about the crises all along, but they refused to act and checkmate the students. It is my child today, it would be another tomorrow, if the root of the problem is not found.”
When correspondence visited the two schools to see the principals for comment, they were hostile and refused to talk, while at the Bode Thomas Police Division, the Divisional Police Officer, DPO was not available for comment. But a police source confirmed the incident and said that they are waiting for the formal report from the two schools to enable them arrest the culprits.