TheCable

About 10 students of the University of Ibadan collapsed in the examination hall on Sunday, forcing some of their colleagues to assault officials of the university’s Distance Learning Centre (DLC).

A student said poor arrangement on the part of the organisers of the programme was responsible for the incident.

He said each of the DLC students, paid over N118,000 per session, arguing that they deserved proper treatment.

He explained that the chaotic situation occurred at the Adebayo Akande hall, Ajibode, where different batches of students were to sit for GES 101 examination, starting from 9am.

“About 10 students actually collapsed, and were immediately rushed to Jaja Clinic [the university health centre],” the student said.

“Security, CSO, and DLC officials were stoned by the angry DLC students. The truth is that they are just toying with the lives of the DLC students. They have the newly-constructed DLC computer based testing (CBT) centre in the faculty of technology but they are not using it.

“This is because they benefit more when the contract is out to other private CBT centres. It is not fair at all.”

But Bayo Okunade, a professor and director of the distance learning centre, disagreed with that, blaming the situation on some of the students.

“Students were supposed to come in batches. We batched them and they were supposed to come at specific time, instead, all of them came virtually the same time and they wanted to get access when it was not even their turn,” he told TheCable.

“For the first time, for the fact that we want best practices, students finish their exams and they see their results immediately. One of the students that collapsed was to write his exam at two o’clock, he found himself at that situation at 12 o’clock. He came earlier than necessary.

“I was at the University Health Centre to access the situation, and before 12pm, there were six students. There was a lady from social work department who confessed that she discharged herself from a hospital where she was being treated for typhoid.”

Okunade added that the university had put in measure to check such occurrences in future.