There have been an outrage as the Rivers State College of Health Science and Management Technology, Port Harcourt expelled three male final year students for allegedly gang-raping their female colleague on campus.
The students’ expulsion was contained in an internal memo dated, Friday, December 18, 2020, signed by the Registrar, Kuapie Ndee-ue, and sighted by our correspondent on Wednesday.
The affected 300-level students, according to the memo, are Ferdinand Gospel of the Department of Emergency Medical Technician; Chim Steve, Department of Health Information Management; and Nedum Sampson from the Dental Surgery Technician Department.
The memo titled: ‘Expulsion from the college of students involved in rape and cultism’, read in part: “The academic board, at its 57th regular meeting held on Thursday, December 17, 2020, approved the expulsion of the following students from the college for their involvement in rape and cultism with immediate effect:
“Ferdinand Bruse Gospel (EMT/17/096), Department of Emergency Medical Technician, 300-level; Chim Gozirim Sunday Steve (HIM/17/038), Department of Health Information Management, 300-level; and Nedum Sampson (DEN/16/024), Department of Dental Surgery Technician.
“Furthermore, the academic board directs that the expelled students should not be found within or around the college campus for any reason or occasion and the expulsion tag should be written expressly on each of the column in the result sheet to prevent any attempt to release their results or subsequent release of certificates to the culprits.”
However, an advocacy group, the Centre for Basic Rights Protection and Accountability Campaign, has criticised the way the institution handled the matter.
The Secretary, Board of Trustee of the group, Prince Wiro, said in a statement that the institution erred when it failed to hand over the accused students to the police for thorough investigation before taking the decision to expel them.
Wiro noted that the allegations of rape and cultism were too weighty to be investigated and concluded by the institution alone without recourse to the police.
One of the expelled students, Chim, who absolved himself and the others, added that they were not given fair hearing before being expelled.
He said, “The accusation against us by the school is false, because we didn’t rape anybody; we have good records in the school and we are not rapists; they accused us wrongly and they never investigated the matter; they just jumped into action and started beating us.
“They held us for three hours at the Man O’War office and didn’t give us any chance to explain what really happened; they jumped into conclusion and forced us to say that we raped the girl; we were reported to the management and the Dean of Student Affairs told the Man O’ War to beat us up; we were held up by the Man O’War for three hours and they almost killed us.”
The Provost of the institution, Prof. Franklin Nlerum, said the college followed the due process before it took a decision against the accused students and also gave them the opportunity to defend themselves, adding that the matter was reported to the police at the Sani Abacha Road Divisional Police Headquarters in Port Harcourt.
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