SaharaReporters has learned that the rector of Yaba College of Technology, Margaret Kudirat Ladipo, reportedly used the military to arrest and detain a former student of the institution, Usman Oloyede.
Usman Oloyede during a student protest
Mr. Oloyede, who was fired from the school, was arrested on Thursday, September 25 after he agreed to meet a soldier who posed as the rector’s assistant. He said the rector had abused her influence with the military to ensure his illegal arrest after claiming falsely that he had threatened her.
Mr. Oloyede stated that a soldier, who presented himself as an assistant to the rector, had lured him into a trap by promising to reverse his expulsion from the college. Mr. Oloyede, who was expelled for alleged examination malpractices, said he had been victimized because of his criticism of the questionable activities of the former rector, Mr. Felix Owosho. He added that Mrs. Ladipo had originally agreed to review his expulsion from the college.
The expelled student said he had already decided to forget about his application to be reinstated, since the current rector had failed to act on the matter. However, he said he received a telephone call on September 25 from a man who claimed to be an assistant to the rector. He agreed to meet the caller, but was shocked when he was arrested and taken to a military guardroom at Sabo, Yaba for detention.
The former student said he was not allowed to communicate with anyone, accusing the rector and those who detained him of planning to keep him for long time without public knowledge of his whereabouts.
Mr. Oloyede said he was transferred to the police station in Panti, Lagos after the intervention of a military officer he spoke to.
He said once he was transferred to the police, the rector's clique cooked up a report that he was complicit in an alleged plan to assassinate Mrs. Ladipo. He said the police told him that two persons reportedly arrested for attempting to kill the rector had allegedly mentioned him as their hirer. But he said his accusers failed to name or produce the purported assassins. Instead, he said the police brought up his previous text message exchanges with the rector, alleging that his texts amounted to a threat to Mrs. Ladipo’s life. He denied that the messages, which had to do with his possible reinstatement as well as the case of a female student who was demobilized from the national youth service corps, remotely amounted to death threats.
A source at Yaba Tech told SaharaReporters that the cause of friction between the rector and Mr. Oloyede arose from the rector’s suspicion that the expelled student maintains ties with her predecessor, Mr. Owosho.
The source said Mrs. Ladipo suspected that online media exposure of her questionable financial expenditures as well as her role in clashes between rival cult groups in the college were being sponsored by her predecessor, likely through Mr. Oloyede. The source also disclosed that Mrs. Ladipo had emerged the new rector against the objections of Mr. Owosho, who tried to maneuver his own wife as his successor. The former rector apparently sought his wife as successor to enable her to cover the tracks of his own corrupt practices.
The source said one of Mrs. Ladipo’s first priorities was to sack staff members suspected to have close ties with her predecessor. She also sought to expel all student leaders perceived to be favorably disposed towards Mr. Owosho.
Our source added that, in the rector’s desperation to rid the college of all perceived enemies, Mrs. Ladipo had expelled all student cult leaders whose gangs she could not control. She was also accused of financing some favored cult gangs, thereby fueling violent frictions between the gangs. Some students and lecturers also accused Mrs. Ladipo of cultivating cult gangsters in the college to serve as thugs for her husband, a politician.
“She [Mrs. Ladipo] also sacked the former Chief Security Officer, Mr. Abdulrasheed Shobo, for not playing along with her plan to punish non-bending students,” our source said. A former bursar at the college, Mr. Olu Ibirogba, was also recently fired for exposing Mrs. Ladipo’s reported looting of millions of naira.
Another source at the college said the rector victimized a female student, Salau Fatima, after the student accused her of playing “mother” to various cult gangs by paying them monthly allowances. The source said Mrs. Ladipo ensured that the student’s name was removed from the mobilization list of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). “Till date, Salau has not been allowed by the college to go for the service—just because she exposed the rot permitted by Mrs. Ladipo's administration,” the source said.
A college source disclosed that Mrs. Ladipo believes that her predecessor, Mr. Owosho, encouraged Ms. Fatima to grant an interview to a SaharaReporters TV crew about the rector’s role in violent clashes between cult gangs in the college.
The source said Mrs. Ladipo accused the female student of paying N60,000 to the SaharaTV crew to air her interview, which asserted that part of the cult violence was instigated by the college's management.
Mr. Oloyede accused the rector of prevailing on soldiers to arrest and detain him because she wanted to silence him forever. He told SaharaReporters that he was lucky to meet somebody who recognized him at Panti police station and who alerted his lawyer about his whereabouts.
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