Secondary school students have caused serious commotion in an Oyo State community after setting their own school on fire.
One of the razed classrooms
Some students of the Isale-Oyo Community High School, Oyo town, have gone on rampage, setting their own classrooms on fire over mass failure in their examination.
According to The Punch, the aggrieved students stormed the school premises on Thursday morning charting solidarity songs.
They were said to have gone haywire afterwards, set fire to blocks of classrooms and fled the premises. The school authorities were said to have alerted men of the Oyo State Fire Service, who responded swiftly to put out the fire.
Policemen were deployed in the school to restore peace but none of the students had been arrested as of the time of filing this report.
The disturbance, observers noted, marked the worst phase of the unrest that began days ago over mass failure in exams.
The school compound was deserted as teachers and other students reportedly fled for fear of being harmed.
Punch reported further that there had been lingering crises since Monday in some secondary schools in the state following mass failure in the last promotion examinations.
The Oyo State Government has set a new promotion policy which states that only students with 50 per cent in Mathematics and English language will transit to the next class.
Students of Anglican Secondary School in Oyo reportedly unleashed mayhem on their teachers and destroyed billboards bearing Governor Abiola Ajimobi’s picture.
The Oyo State Commissioner for Education, Prof. Banji Olowofela, lamented poor performance of pupils in external examinations, saying public schools could no longer continue to breed substandard pupils.
“What government says is that there is no automatic promotion again. Our external examinations from1999 till date have been abysmally poor. If we push them to the outside world, we are not helping them.
“We are trying to give them the opportunity to rediscover themselves. The school has been closed indefinitely,” he added.
