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No fewer than 120 students may have been expelled by the authorities of Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State, for what has been described as “wilful disobedience and insubordination” on the part of the students.

Sunday Sun sources informed that already 66 of them have been served letters of dismissal.
The affected students, however, say it is victimization and nothing more.

In an interview with Sunday Sun, a father of one of the affected students, who was visibly miffed by the action of the school authorities, threatened legal action.
According to him, his son, Akwa Bassey, a third year student of Accounting in the university was expelled along with more than a hundred others for coming to the assembly hall without their bibles.
Mr Bassey said the action was rather hasty for an inordinately expensive institution where parents pay several millions of Naira for their children’s education.

Sunday Sun investigation revealed that the Accounting student had gone for early morning fitness exercise shortly before the general assembly on that day. By the time he got back to his hostel, his roommate had locked the door to their room. So he couldn’t take his bible to the general assembly.
When students were asked to raise their bibles at the gathering, some obviously did not come with theirs. The defaulting students were reportedly ordered out from the assembly and summarily expelled.
“They were not even suspended for some days or reprimanded verbally but were dismissed just like that. It is unheard of and simply inhuman,” Mr. Bassey fumed.

But responding to Sunday Sun enquiry, the institution’s corporate/public affairs officer, Mr Egban Emmanuel Kalu, denied knowledge of the expulsion of the students.
“I am not aware of any such dismissal in the school,” he said in a telephone conversation.
He, however, promised to get back to the newspaper an hour later, saying he wanted to get confirmation and because he was driving at the time. But he never did.

Much later and several calls after, Mr Egban still refused to pick his call even though his cell phone rang incessantly about 7pm. However, Sunday Sun learnt that a meeting had been hastily convened at press time by the university to bar any person or official of the school from speaking with the press on the matter.