Varsity student caught with bombs on campus

• ‘How I got the devices’

There was anxiety at the University of Uyo (UNIUYO) campus in Akwa Ibom State yesterday when a part one student (names withheld) was caught with two hand grenades tucked in his bag by operatives of Peace on Campus Initiatives (PCI), an anti-cultism NGO operating on campuses of higher institutions.

Two improvised explosive devices (IEDs), widely speculated as hand grenades, were found in a bag that belonged to the suspect by some students, who alerted the PCI.

National Coordinator of PCI, Mr. Oliver Cromwell, said yesterday that his men in the UNIUYO chapter got information about the suspect keeping the IEDs, and trailed him to his males’ hostel.

Cromwell said his men on discovering the bombs that were well-packaged in a bag in the hostel’s room, apprehended the suspect and invited the  anti-bomb squad of the state police command, Ikot Akpan Abia, Uyo, to the scene for verification. The squad detonated the two devices and searched the hostel rooms for more.

The suspect who was said to have confessed during interrogation, to keeping the explosives, dismissed that he bought or made them with intent to wreaking havoc on campus. According to him, he found the devices within the school premises, saying he was trying to hand them over to the university’s security.

“It all started on Friday when I was coming back from church. Just close to where the construction was going on, I saw two white things on the ground. When I picked them, I saw the instruction ‘hand grenade.”

He however, did not explain why he did not alert the school security.

The command’s spokesman, Mr. Etim Dickson, a Deputy Superintendent of Police, who confirmed the incident, however, explained that the explosives were local devices, which could have been invented by any of the science students in the university.

Promising that the police would investigate, Dickson urged students and parents not to entertain any fear about possible breakdown of law and order in the university community. “The incident had been properly taken care of. We are on top of the situation as we urge all students and employees of the institution to go about their normal businesses. We shall get to the root of the mater,” he said.

The university’s spokesman, Mr Godfrey Essien, confirmed the incident, but stressed that he would not speak further on it since the matter had been taken over by the police.


THE SUN