Niger Delta varsity students protest imposition of dress codes

A cross section of students of Niger Delta University protesting imposition of dress codes, increase in school fees.
Okafor Ofiebor/Port Harcourt

Students of Niger Delta University owned by the Bayelsa State Government have staged a peaceful protest in Amasoma and Yenegoa, the state capital, over what they called demeaning policies like wearing of school uniforms.

One of the newly introduced policies is a compulsory dress code for the students, a development the students consider as strange and unnecessary.

According to the school authority, Engineering students will henceforth wear carton colour trouser/skirt with white shirt, and a matching carton colour tie/scarf on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

On Tuesdays, the students are expected to wear blue jeans and red t-shirt, while on Friday, they are to adorn a “simple traditional attire” to school for lectures.

Some students in the faculty of Engineering who craved anonymity said the policy is not only childish but shows that the management of the university is beginning to lose focus of its mandate.

“We don’t understand what is going on. How can you force adults to wear a particular outfit to school, a university for that matter? It’s insane! Not even private universities subject their students to that kind of policy. It will not work”, she said.

A student leader in the institution in an interview with PM News correspondent said: “We decided to demonstrate our total rejection of the new policy by embarking on this peaceful protest. We are simply saying that it is a wrong thing to introduce.

“We call on the Vice-Chancellor to rescind the decision because it is anti-students. We condemn it and we are not going to accept it. They should not stress us with what we are not comfortable with”.

PM News correspondent gathered that the students have also rejected the alleged increase in tuition fees and the closure of the portal for school fees, which will automatically make students who failed to register for the previous academic session repeat their level of study.

Efforts to reach the Public Relations Officer (PRO), of the institution, Mr. Ingezi Idoni, to comment on the issue, yielded no result as calls put across to his mobile phone did not connect before filing this report.

The Bayelsa state government had not reacted to the issue at the time of filing this report.