Forty-four students have been charged with murder and arson, following the June 12 protest which rocked the University of Uyo (UniUyo), Akwa Ibom State.
The students were brought to court by the police in eight Hilux Pick-Up vans amid tight security.
The students appeared before Magistrate Lawrence Udonwa on a five-count charge of arson and murder.
Magistrate Udonwa held that since the case involved murder and arson, the police should not have brought the suspects to his court.
He held that the law upon which the police acted was obsolete and out-dated.
The magistrate, however, ordered that the case be transferred to the High Court in Uyo.
The parents of most of the students were in the court. Most of them accused the police of not arresting the real perpetrators of the crime.
One of the mothers of the suspects told The Nation that her son was arrested while packing his luggage to leave the hostel.
The June 12 peaceful protest turned violent when police applied minimum force to end the riot.
The police threw several tear-gas canisters and shot sporadically to disperse the rioters.
A 200-level Zoology student, Kingsley Umoette, died.
After Umoette’s death, property worth millions of naira were destroyed by the protesting students.
Besides the school properties destroyed, individual properties were not spared.
The students and the police have been trading words over what led to the death.
A member of the Students’ Union Government, who pleaded not to be named, said a security agent shot the student.
He said the killing angered the students who set ablaze the Vice Chancellor’s Office, Deputy Vice Chancellor’s Office (Academic) and Records Office.
Twelve vehicles, some of them owned by the university, were destroyed.
But the police said they could not explain what killed Umoette because his body was brought from the campus to the road where the police stood by the students during the protest.
Police spokesman Etim Dickson said: “You know we cannot enter the campus; we have to be outside.
“It was the protesting students who brought the body to us on the road and it was collected from them.
“The mother of the deceased has come to us. She made a statement. The cause of the death we don’t know yet.
“What killed the boy from inside the school we don’t know?
“Also, about 45 other students coming from various institutions were arrested. Some of them came from Bida Polytechnic and we also have some from Madonna University.
“They only dropped the body on the road because they said they wanted to carry the body to the Government House and we told them ‘no; it is not their duty and we collected the body from them.”
