The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Ibadan (UI) Chapter, has called on the Inspector General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba, to assist the police command in Oyo with all logistics needed to arrest the killers of UI professor Opeyemi Ajewole.

This is contained in a release signed by the chairman of the UI chapter of ASUU, Ayo Akinwole, on Thursday.

Mr Ajewole, until he was killed, was a lecturer in the Department of Social and Environmental Forestry Development. Yet-to-be-identified assailants gunned him down in the evening of Monday in Ibadan.

The union has implored President Bola Tinubu to take a passionate interest and ensure the security system unmasks the faces behind the murder of the professor.

“The heart of every ASUU-UI member is bleeding so profusely as if pierced by swords. Our bones shook so tremendously as if our marrows were naked in the tundra region,” the ASUU statement said.

It added, “We condemn in totality the gruesome murder of our comrade, Prof. Opeyemi Ajewole and charge the security operatives to track down and apprehend the perpetrators of this dastardly act, with a view to unravelling the motive behind the incident, as well as bringing the perpetrators to book.”

According to ASUU, the only tribute that the death of Mr Ajewole deserves is that his killers are brought to justice and that Nigerians’ lives should matter to Mr Tinubu’s presidency.

He noted that “Prof Ajewole’s gruesome murder again reminded us of how valueless human lives had become in our clime.”

The ASUU chief maintained that “death lurks in all imaginable and unimaginable corners of this country and comes cheaply,” stressing that the populace “is constantly assailed by terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery, assassination, hunger, unemployment, and many more insidious exterminators of our individual and collective dreams.”

The statement added, “The situation of the Nigerian academics is even doubly precarious; they are prophets without any honour at home.”

“It is, therefore, disheartening that academics who cultivate, preserve, and disseminate knowledge for the advancement and development of society will become victims of societal malady to such an extent as to be targeted for elimination,” ASUU explained.

The statement also mentioned that the union “wishes to use this teary occasion of Prof. Ajewole’s sudden death to call on the Nigerian state to resolutely tackle the problem of insecurity in the country, apprehend the killers of Prof. Ajewole and punish them most appropriately.”

(NAN)