The Federal Polytechnic, Ado Ekiti, has been shut on the orders of the authorities of the institution.
The Students’ Union Government (SUG) has also been banned by management, with immediate effect. The actions followed the violent protest staged on Friday by the students over alleged meddling of management in the affairs of the SUG, including alleged attempts to install its stooges as leaders of the students body during its election.
During the protest, the students had disrupted normal academic activities by blocking all the gates leading to the institution for hours, thereby hindering human and vehicular movement. Some valuable facilities in the institution’s School of Engineering were also destroyed.
The institution’s Director of Protocol, Information and Public Relations, Mr Adeyemi Adejolu, in a statement issued in Ado Ekiti denied the students’ claims that authorities were interfering with the union’s affairs.
According to him, the decision to shut the polytechnic was arrived at during an emergency joint meeting of the Academic Board and Management Committee.
The institution’s spokesman said that students would resume Nov. 10, adding that second-semester examination would commence on Nov. 12. He also announced that embargo had been placed on students’ union activities with immediate effect. Adejolu said that an 11-man committee had already been set up to look at the immediate and remote causes of the protest.