Lukman Olabiyi
The management of Federal Polytechnic Oko, Anambra State has refuted  story published in some national newspapers that its students were involved frequent cult-related violence rocking their host community recently. 
In a press statement issued by the institution’s Public Relations Officer (PRO), Obini Onuchukwu, Okopoly’s management , described the said report linking its students to the ongoing cult clashes in the area as false information intended to portray the institution in bad light. 
 
Onuchukwu stated that the clashes which allegedly led to some killings, happened among cult groups in the host community and its  environs, have no connection with the students of the polytechic. 
The attention of the management of Federal Polytechnic Oko has been  drawn to indiscriminate publications  on  the involvement of our students in cult related violence.
” For the records, we wish to state clearly that sudents of the institution were not involved in the ongoing cult clashes that happened recently in the community.
” More worrisome was that the institution was never consulted for clarification or confirmation of the report, as the rule of objective journalism demands.
” Such a false information is capable of portraying the institution in bad light, create fear in the minds of students and staff, and further ridicule the laudable efforts of the Polytechic Management to weed out cultists from the institution.
” Our students are not in the school because of the shutdown of schools as directed by the Federal Government to prevent the spread of COVID-19 pandemic.  It is indeed spurious to claim that students were killed at a time when  their hostels were empty, and the College activities grounded, except for skeletal services provided by some staff on essential duty,” the press statement read.
The school’s management further stated that eagle-eyed security system put in place had reduced cultism to zero level for the past 10 years and there was no possible way for cultists to creep back into the institution to wreak havoc when some strict measures have been devised to wipe out their nefarious and nocturnal activities in the Polytechnic.
Okopoly’s management pleaded with all relevant security agencies to fish out the masterminds of the recent bloody incident, as a matter of urgency, before the resumption of school.