• Seeks justice, release of exam scripts

The mother of Favour, a final year student of Ebonyi State University, who allegedly took her own life by drinking a poisonous substance, is traumatised.

Mrs Grace Ugwuka, the distraught mother of three (two boys and a girl), believes her only daughter could have been alive, if she had not persuaded her to re-sit a departmental course that kept her at the Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, for five years.

Mrs Ugwuka, a Technical Officer at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), had stirred controversy penultimate week when she hired an ambulance and brought the corpse of her daughter to the Ebonyi State University.

Shouting and weeping uncontrollably, she had asked the school authority to “come and carry your corpse”, alleging that the institution was responsible for the death of her daughter. Recall that the management of the institution denied it was responsible for the death.

Addressing newsmen in Abakaliki, the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Chigozie Ogbu, had maintained that the university has a process where a student who feels he or she had been marked down or was being victimised could seek redress.

She also alleged that a senior lecturer in the department of English and Literary Studies (names withheld) was complicit. “If I knew, I would not have allowed her. This is why I have been blaming myself. If only I had accepted that she should not repeat that examination a third time,” she said.

She insisted the school frustrated her daughter to death and demanded justice. Favour, 23, allegedly drank a poisonous substance and was pronounced dead shortly after she was rushed to the Federal University Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, penultimate Wednesday.

Mrs Ugwuka said her daughter’s problem with the senior lecturer started during her first year in the school in 2018.

She explained: “My daughter got admission into Ebonyi State University in 2018. This unfortunate journey with this lecturer started the same year.

“My daughter called me one day and said there is a certain lecturer. And that immediately she entered the school, she was told she needed to be careful of him; that anything he says he does; that she should not miss his lectures.

“On a particular day, he was marking the class attendance. When he got to her name, he called ‘Favour Ugwuka’. She answered. He pointed at her and said she had not been attending his lectures. Then he said, ‘you will not graduate from this school.”

“My daughter told him that she had been attending his lectures. He asked her to come and show him her name. When she came, he presented the list and asked, ‘where is your name here?’ She looked at it and said the list was not her class list.

“He asked that another class list be brought, and her name was found there. He observed that she had been attending classes. But that did not change anything.”

Mrs Ugwuka said she went to the university the next day and met the lecturer who confirmed that indeed, the girl would not graduate since she had not been attending classes. She said she had pleaded with him to pardon her daughter.

She said: “In the final year, my daughter called and informed me that she failed the course of the senior lecturer. I said so this man has not forgiven you since the first year? I said said there was no problem. She should rewrite it.

“I struggled and raised N130,000 and she registered the course again for an extra year. After taking the examination, she called to inform me that people were ‘sorting’ the lecturer. I told her I did not have money, and even if I had, I would not pay because I had never done it before.

“If I had known that the state of education in Nigeria has reached the level where if you do not ‘sort’, you will not pass, I would have gone to borrow the money and paid for her.”
Mrs Ugwuka said she was informed that a man operating a business centre in the school was collecting the money on the lecturer’s behalf.

“The course is a second semester course. She had seen all her results, and she cleared them all. She had already started clearance, believing she would pass the course. But my daughter wept, saying she had failed his course again, and it was the only course she had been waiting for,” she said.

On allegations by the school that her daughter had several failures, she said: “I have my daughter’s extra year result. What they are saying about my daughter’s result is nonsense. “They changed her results. My daughter is an average student.

They claimed that she had several re-sits, so how come I did not pursue other lecturers except this one? Why did he say from the first year that this girl will not graduate? I don’t know where they got those results from. They changed my daughter’s result and created a different thing entirely. My daughter forwarded her entire results to me.

She did not have any extra courses.” Mrs Ugwuka challenged the leadership of Ebonyi State University to make public the examination scripts of her daughter and hold the senior lecturer responsible.