Following the resurgence of cult activities on the campus of the Benue State University, leading to the killing of one Isaac Nyiyongo, a former student of the Department of Political Science of the institution, the school has taken proactive measures to curtail further criminal activities on the campus.

The Vice-Chancellor of the university, Prof. Moses Kembe, who announced the measures at a news conference on Thursday in Makurdi, said all visitors into the school would be subjected to a thorough search at all three entry points.

Kembe said all students would mandatorily wear their identification tags while on campus and appealed to members of the public to support the university in checking cult activities on the campus.

According to the vice-chancellor, the school has constituted an anti cultism squad to tackle the menace of cultism on campus.

He said the deceased was an old student, who enrolled in the school in 2006 and blamed the cult attack on ASUU strike announced by the lecturers.

Kembe explained that owing to the strike announcement, security on campus was relaxed to allow nonstudents access into the school to help their friends pack their belongings out of campus.

He regretted that in spite of the increased security surveillance on campus, the increasing cult activities along the varsity neighborhood made the school vulnerable to attacks.

Fielding questions from journalists, Kembe said one of the most difficult challenges he faced was identifying cult groups and knowing their patrons.

” It is a secret society; they don’t carry identification tags and their operations are clandestine. It is difficult to know them.

” Apart from that, cultism is criminalized in this state, so, even if we identify them, we can only hand them over to the police for prosecution,” he said.

 

NAN