By Ahmed Yusuf
Thirty-seven years ago, precisely on May 22-23, 1986, Ahmadu Bello University, ABU, students embarked on a peaceful protest against their Vice Chancellor, Professor Ango Abdullahi, who invited the police to quell the protest. The violence inflicted by the police is only comparable to that of the 1978 “Ali-Must-Go” nation-wide students’ protest against the increase in education financing.
*Ango Abdullahi
The Police brutalised, shot, injured, raped, murdered students and other citizens both on campus and the neigbouring Samaru community. The Academic Staff Union of the Universities, ABU Branch, wrote that the general conduct of the police “violated every known code of conduct for such operations”, adding: “To the police, it did not matter whether or not one was a ‘rioting’ student or a 13-year-old sitting quietly in a secondary school classroom; whether one was fleeing or refusing to disperse, whether one was armed with stones or not. It was as if they had a deep seated grudge against their victims.”
