Story by Franklin ASARE-DONKOH
The Ashanti Regional Police Command has launched investigations into the acrimonious clashes between two rival halls—Katanga and Unity Hall—at the campus of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).
According to the University’s Relations Officer of KNUST, Dr. Daniel Norris Bekoe, the university authorities are assisting the police to investigate the incidents that led to the clash between the two rival halls on Thursday, August 18.
Dr. Bekoe hinted that the whole university campus is networked under the surveillance of CCTV cameras, so relevant footage will be handed over to the police to speed up their investigations.
Speaking to the media after the incident, Dr. Bekoe revealed that the clashes destroyed about nine (9) cars belonging to staff while about 10 students sustained various degrees of injury.
Reacting to the statement issued by the Ashanti Regional Coordinating Council, which suggested that the council had picked up intelligence that some students were likely to engage in violence following a similar clash at the University of Ghana, Dr. Bekoe maintained that the university campus had long been declared a security zone, thus the police presence had been seen days before the clash.
He assured parents and the public that calm had been restored to the university campus.
“In the process, they destroyed about nine vehicles belonging to staff.
The police on campus called for reinforcements, and calm was restored. There were about ten or eleven students who sustained various degrees of injuries, and they were rushed to the university hospital for attention.
As we speak, we are helping the police to commence an investigation into this, and fortunately we have networked the whole campus,” he reiterated.
However, Dr. Bekoe admitted that the university authorities did not anticipate that there would be these kinds of violent clashes on campus.
He said for the past two to three weeks, there has been police presence on campus because the university community was declared a security zone long ago by the Regional Security Council, so there has been police presence on campus.