Normal academic session was at a point disrupted on Thursday at the Osogbo Campus of the Osun state University when a poisonous substance leaked during a lecture resulting to 12, 300 level students confirmed to have slumped after inhaling the odor coming out from the substance.
Though there has been various points to the story as students in the campus gave different perspectives as to where the dangerous odor emanated from.
While the 12 victims of the poisonous leakage were said to have been rushed to a nearby hospital for medical attention some students in the academic premise said the smell was a gas leakage from one of the laboratories while others as at press time could not trace the source of the smell.
One of the students who spoke under anonymity said “some 300 level students were receiving a lecture in Anatomy Department this afternoon when the incident happened. The lecture room was overcrowded and some of the students had to squat while one of them sat on an industrial fire extinguisher inside the room. I think the student sat on it for about one hour or thereabout and, unknown to him, his weight had exacted pressure on the extinguisher, causing the container to release a heavy concentration of carbon dioxide inside the already stuffy lecture room.
The students inhaled the leaked carbon dioxide and some of them collapsed and were taken to hospitals outside the campus when the situation was becoming very serious. Some of them were taken to Our Lady of Fatima Hospital at Jaleyemi area.
One of the affected students, Basirat, has nobody here in Nigeria. Her parents are in Côte d’Ivoire and we have been praying that nothing bad should happen to any of them.”
Meanwhile the Vice-Chancellor of the university, Professor. Labo Popoola, while confirming the incident said some students of Health sciences tampered with the nozzle of the cylinder during lecture which result to the explosion.
Professor Popoola while speaking on the incident said” Some students of our College of Health Sciences, Osogbo campus, sat on a cylinder of a fire extinguisher around a classroom. They tampered with the nozzle of the cylinder, which later exploded. In the stampede that occurred while the students numbering about 200 were escaping to safety, some were injured, while about 20 of them who inhaled the poisonous gas were evacuated to our health centre and other hospitals by our staff.
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