Among the many abominations and impunities that are prevalent at the various higher institutions, are the activities of students’ cultists who usually engage in bloodletting, gang rape, kidnapping and armed robbery. While the school authorities try to address these violence driven crimes on campus, Community Watchdog has been alerted of a certain death trap in the name of “Old Chibyke Lodge” which situates at the back of the school gate and owned by an oil magnet and major petroleum products marketer, where unsuspecting students are allegedly lured to their untimely deaths.
Besides the alleged yearly death occurrence, the privately owned students hostel, maintains a mountain of refuse with no deliberate attempt by the management of the students hostel to evacuate and clean-up the messy place. Following sustained refusal by the management to consider the health and welfare of the students, most of who are vulnerable to putrefying matter and its attendant health hazards, some students who were allocated rooms very close to the heavy offensive stench that is always oozing from the dump, had to vacate the apartments after they had pleaded to the wife of the oil marketer who is known to manage the hostel complex as proprietress to come to their aid, which appeals fell on the deaf ears of the defiant madam.
For each academic session, the duo of Chibyke and his wife collect as much as Ninety Thousand Naira (N90,000) per room, yet they cannot clean up the mountain of “doti” which is daily manufacturing germs in the place. Our source reveals that the abandonment of the refuse is a decoy for countless number of inflicted ailments encountered by those who live at the hostel. For instance, the septic tank or soak away pit had collapsed for close to two months now yet the Chibyke management is sadly doing nothing to address the plight of the students who are instead sniffing the stench as if they are sniffing cocaine. The whole place is an eye sore and no decent person can advise his child or ward to inhabit it for a second.
Even after a protest march embarked upon by the affected residents of the hostel complex recently, this could not yield any result as the caretakers remained obstinate and adamant to the ugly environmental condition of Chibyke lodge. the occupants while on the protest march had scooped out reasonable quantity of the excreta and putrefying matter which they spread all over the office of the Chibyke proprietress inside Owerri town when their passionate appeals continually fell on the ears of those who are not only hard of hearing but completely insensitive and deaf but whose sole business is to rake in money from the blood of helpless citizens.
They therefore call on the safety professionals to come to their aid and save them from these tragedies which cause several ailments and possibly death. Recently, there have been reported cases of mysterious deaths in the Chibyke Students Lodge. Last year a female student was found dead right inside her room. But for the intervention of the Rector, Dr. (Mrs.) C.U. Njoku who pleaded to be allowed to take other occupants on bail, they would have languished in prison custody. The latest mystery death was that of Bright, a Food Tech final year student who took ill and went home for treatment only to be reported dead days after. This latest report of mystery death has instilled fears in the other occupants who questioned why a student must die every year in the hostel and vowed to relocate and forfeit the advance rent paid for the subsisting academic session.
