On this day in September 2006, a bloody cult clash at the Ambrose Alli University Ekpoma, Edo State, left
seven students and an NDLEA official dead.
The cult groups included the Eiye Confraternity and the Neo-Black Movement, also known as Black Axe.
Edo State commissioner of police, Mr. Hassan Bala, who confirmed the incident, disclosed that five persons were arrested and the police was on the trail of others involved in the bloody clash.
It was learnt that the NDLEA officer, who was in company with three other operatives, was shot in the head. They had gone to the school to effect the arrest of a student said to be a dealer in Indian hemp when the attackers, believed to fellow cult members of the target of the operatives, struck.
Seven student of the university were reportedly killed following fierce fighting that ensued between the rival cults, as rumour had it that the NDLEA came calling based on the information from one of the groups.
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The commissioner of police confirmed that he deployed three units of the police mobile force to the university town to handle the security situation. Students left the area for fear of being attacked.
In 1952, Nobel Prize laureate, Wole Soyinka, and a group of six friends formed the Pirate Confraternity at the elite University College, Ibadan, then part of the University of London.
According to the Pirates, the “Magnificent Seven,” as they called themselves, observed that the university was populated with wealthy students associated with the colonial powers and a few poorer students striving in manner and dress to be accepted by the more advantaged students, while social life was dictated by tribal affiliation.
Soyinka later noted that the Pirates wanted to differentiate themselves from “stodgy establishment and its pretentious products in a new educational institution different from a culture of hypocritical and affluent middleclass, different from alienated colonial aristo- crats.”
The organisation adopted the motto “Against all conventions,” the skull and crossbones as their logo, while members adopted confraternity names such as “Cap’n Blood” and “Long John Silver.”