1,500 Students escape death as rainstorm wreck havock on FCE Abeokuta

No fewer than 1500 students, scores of invigilators, and some members of staff of the Federal College of Education, Osiele, Abeokuta on Tuesday escaped death when the 30-minute- rainstorm pulled off the roof of some buildings in the school including a 1500-seaters hall during the second semester examination.

It was gathered that the incident occurred on Tuesday around 2:30pm when many of the students of the institution were already seated in the hall to write their second semester examinations of the 2016/2017 academic session.

When our correspondent visited the campus on Wednesday, the impacts of the rainstorm were very obvious as some trees fell down while a number of roofs of some buildings were destroyed.

Some of the affected buildings include; the office of the Provost, the vocational education department, office of the Dean, the Micro Teaching Laboratory, Students Union building, hostels ,the 1500-seater hall of the institution among others.

Speaking with newsmen, Deputy Provost, Dr Rafiu Soyele expressed shock over the incident, appealing to the Federal government to come to the aid of the institution.

He lamented that the incident occurred when the institution was suffering from paucity of fund.

Soyele who emphatically said the damages are enormous was also of the opinion that the issue needed to be addressed on time before the students resume in November.

His words, “As at yesterday, we were in the office around 2:30pm, when the thunder storm came but we thought it was going to be a small thing, but, surprisingly, it even started from my office, I noticed flood in my office and I asked some staff to clean it up and just as they were doing that, I started receiving calls from different quarters reporting the devastating effect the rain has had on their files and sections.

”We started moving round to see what has really happened, we were sad because of the devastating effect the thunder storm had on the campus.

“The storm affected the provost office, the vocational education department, office of the dean, the micro teaching laboratory, Students union building, the 1500-seater hall of the institution among others. In fact, the incident occurred during an examination.

“The damage is enormous, the buildings that are affected are not less than thirty, we discovered this when we moved round yesterday and that is the issue on ground.

“Honestly, we are not happy with what has happened here yesterday, but, we just have to let the government know the environmental hazard that has occurred in our college yesterday”, he said..

Talking about the estimation of the damaged buildings in naira and kobo, the provost also said.” well, that is the duty of our director of works and I am sure that before the end of the week he must have been able to come out with a specific amount that can capture the repairs.

“We would need the assistance of the Federal government because the damage is enormous and we all know that we are in an era of paucity of fund.

“We are lucky because we are almost concluding our exams and the students are almost leaving for their various homes so, this has no effect on the students for now, but we must address it before their resumption and by November ending the students will be resuming back to school because we are almost concluding our admission process.

“But we still want to thank God because there is no casualty at all.

Abiodun Taiwo, Abeokuta