Students of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) are protesting what they say is persistent interference in their affairs by the University’s Dean of Students, Dr. Kofi Owusu Daaku.
The angry students accuse the Dean of Students of perpetrating acts to render the Student Representative Council (SRC) impotent.
Among the many problems the students accuse him, is unconventionally taking charge of the SRC accounts which has rendered the students body incapable of managing their own affairs.
He is also accused of taking management of SRC hostel, as a result, is now responsible of distributing rooms at the hostel which according to the students must be under the management of the SRC.
Their outburst has been aggraved by reports on Focus Fm and myJCR’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/myJCR) that the Dean prevented some students of three halls of residence from voting in the just ended SRC elections.
The University this year decided to go biometric with the SRC elections to curb the recurring issue of rigging and other electoral malpractices that accompany the manual system.
As good as the decision seemed, the current unreliable electricity in the country especially affected the process which pushed the elections into the night specifically to end at 8 pm as announced by the Dean of Students.
According to the students, as at 8:00pm a reasonable number of students were still in the queue in most of the polling stations that were affected by electricity. However, Dr. Owusu-Daaku allegedly unplugged the electioneering equipments at University Hall (Katanga) first, then Unity Hall (Conti) and later Africa Hall whiles voting continued at other polling stations.
Some student of the two traditional all-male rival halls, Unity Hall and University Hall as well as the only all-female Africa Hall are calling for a re-run of the poll.
They went on a demonstration on Friday, April 25 to verbally petition the Vice-Chancellor to call Dr. Owusu-Daaku to order.
First ever in the recent history of the School, the rival male halls (Conti and Katanga) came together to spearhead the demonstration against the Dean of Students.
Some of the aggrieved students had this to say.
“We cannot continue like this because they realize ‘conti’ and ‘katanga’ are always under each other’s throat, they use that to manipulate us the students.”
“How can the Dean of Students stoop so low to meddle in students politics. This is awful. He did what he did because he had favourites among the candidates he wanted to win.”
“They always manipulate students elections to get the ones they can push around. We are fed up and we want him to leave us alone because we are capable of managing our own affairs.”
Vice-Chancellor, Professor William Otoo Ellis, promised to rectify the situation but asked the students to submit a written complaint for consideration.
Duke Aaron Sasu won the Presidential seat with 1, 875 votes with the closest competitor, Kofi Adabor, attaining 1,615 votes.
