More than 20 female students of the Cross River State College of Health Technology are reported to have been forced out from their various school hostels in Calabar.
Most of those affected are female students whose ages range from 18 to 25.
The incident is said to have happened early Friday.
Newspot learnt that this has left most of the students whose parents are not residing in Calabar stranded.
Many of the students were seen in the school premises and the neighbourhood with their belongings, crying and begging passersby for money to travel back to their homes in distant local government areas of the State.
Some of the affected students said they never expected to be thrown out of their hostels as they were not owing the school.
Some of the students, who gave their names as Linda Odey and Grace Brown, in their 20s, explained that at the beginning of every school session, they usually pay a cumulative sum of N25,000.
“This amount includes other fees associated with the hostel, which sum up to the annual fee of N25,000.
“Four of us combined to pay N25,000 each, amounting to N100,000 for four bed spaces in a room,” Grace said.
According to Linda, many of them are not indebted to the hostel authorities, adding that the students have stayed peacefully until one Pastor Mike resumed as head of students affairs.
Another affected student explained further that when Pastor Mike made the move initially, the students presented their receipts but the man insisted that he wanted to start his tenure on a clean slate.
“So when we were posted to different health related government offices to enable us do our practical training, the man used the opportunity of our absence in the school hostel to force open our rooms and threw out our belongings which littered the school premises”, Grace sobbed.
Reacting, the provost of Cross River College of Technology, Jane Adah denied that they forcibly ejected students from their hostels.
She said the students were allowed to vacate owing to planned renovation work on the hostels.
She further stated that not many of the students were paying the official hostel fee of N15,000, adding that some of them did not go into College account due to alleged fraudulent activities of hostel officials.
“It is untrue that we forced our students out of hostels, causing them to be stranded.
“The facilities inside the hostels were extensively damaged. And it became imperative that management should fix them.
“So we notified the students that before August 31, repairs and general facelift would occur for three weeks.
“The new students’ affairs officer, a pastor, was encouraged to right the many wrongs.
“There have been some fraudulent collections of hostel fees and associated fees, such as for toiletries, etc, which raised the amount to N20,000 and this often ended up in some persons pockets.
“Again we noticed that many of these students would later admit more persons secretly to the hostels.
“We also discovered that these students stay beyond their durations in the school because of connivance of some officials”, she said.
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