Graduation isn’t just about leaving the rigorous walls of a University, but a step to achieving what comes after. Idoko Nicholas Inalegwu, was one of such student, with high hopes of being a doctor someday.
A final year student of Medicine and Surgery, at Benue State University, Makurdi. Nicholas committed suicide recently following his withdrawal from medical school after spending 10 years.
His friends said he was heavily depressed upon receiving the news of his withdrawal.
Benue.com reports that students of the school took his coffin to the Vice Chancellor’s office in protest, insisting that the school was responsible for his death. Adding that he was withdrawn because he failed an impromptu medical re-sit exams.
A friend who spoke under anonymity to correspondents said;
“He has been talking about it, that his wish is to die a painless death. The school has finished him. There is no where in the world that a medical student is withdrawn after spending 10 years.”
Benue.com also reports that the University students have often frowned at the way re-sit exams were organized. Adding that it was extended for up to a year after the main exams were written, instead of the supposed 6 weeks interval.
Most medical students in the school spend as much as 12 years due to the delay of exams, leaving them frustrated, delusional and even depressed, as their mates in other schools graduate long before they do.
In protest, the students gained the student’s corpse from the mortuary and marched with it in a coffin and left it in front of the VC’s office, saying it will stay there until something is done about the manner in which the school operates, adding that their colleague’s death won’t be in vain.
They also blocked the Gboko-Makurdi Highway causing a congestion of traffic, burning tires, carrying placards and asking their Vice Chancellor to address them; adding that the VC and provost are paying a deaf ear to their predicaments especially that of the medical students in the school.
