Students and teachers of Hilltop Model Secondary School in Minna, Niger State, were yesterday, February 24, 2015, thrown into panic as they scampered for their safety as some some soldiers of the Nigeria Army led by a senior officer, from the 31 Artillery Brigade in the state, unleashed havoc in the school because a teacher punished his girlfriend.
According to reports, the soldiers invaded the school in a commando fashion, fully armed with assault riffles, during the morning assembly and held the teachers and students hostage, asking for the teacher who had the effrontery to punish and officer's lover. The report added that the soldiers disrupted academic activities for the day before whisking the female student who was punished, away.
A teacher who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the soldiers with their name tags removed, arrived in a Mitsubishi Hilux pickup, with registration number 31 AB 035 NA, shooting sporadically into the air as if they were going to war.
The teacher continued that the soldiers came on the invitation of one Farida Mustapha, a Senior Secondary School female student of the school, who was punished by a teacher over an offence.
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He explained that the teacher was having a lesson with Farida’s class when an unknown student used an abusive language.
And since nobody owned up to the misbehaviour, the teacher punished the whole class, including Farida.
The girl then invited her boyfriend who led the team of soldiers to harass everyone in the school with a promise to deal with the errant teacher.
The school's principal, Bala Mohammed, spoke on the incident:
"We thank God that the students were not on break, else they would have knocked at least one down.
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I cannot talk to journalists now until I get permission from the state Commissioner for Education, Alhaji Danladi Abdulhameed.
But I have invited the Zonal Inspector and he is on the way to the school to see things for himself."
