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By Hank Hyena

August 2, 1999 | It is Saturday at dawn on a beautiful college campus. Inside their dorm rooms, students sleep away their Friday night escapades, perhaps resting their cerebellums after a tough week of study. Such a setting suggests quiet time in Academia, that place far away from the scary goings-on that afflict the "real world."

But this is not the United States. It's Nigeria, where living on a college campus can expose you to a kind of violent crime that seems anomalous in a university.

At sunrise on July 10th a convoy of cars and jeeps approached Awo Hall at the prestigious and tranquil Obafemi Awolowe University in Ile-Ife, 160 miles east of Lagos. About 40 marauders emerged from the vehicles, clad in black trousers and black T-shirts, their faces hidden by masks. These were the student and ex-student members of the "Black Axes" and they wielded shotguns and hatchets. Witnesses told The News (Lagos) that the attackers called out their targets by name: "Faro, come out if you are a man! Legacy, come out if na your father born you!" Pouring into the residency, the killers then indiscriminately annihilated every student in their path. Local newspaper reports described the horror of the crime scene: mattresses saturated with blood dripping through floors into rooms below, walls splashed with brains. Five died on the scene; three more expired in the following days and eight more remain in critical condition.

This nightmare seems surreal to Western pupils sequestered in peaceful ivory towers, but in Nigeria, with its myriad social disorders, campus violence has grown over the years to epidemic proportions. But the violence has not come from outside but rather from student organizations themselves.

Secret societies, or "cults" as they are also called in Nigeria -- like the Black Axes, Sea Dogs and Eiye Confraternity -- have brutally ravaged Nigeria's 37 state-run institutions. The massacre at Obafemi Owolowe University (OAU) is only the most recent tragedy; observers estimate that 150 students have been slain in the last five years, with scores more victimized by rape, assault, extortion, kidnapping, blackmail, torture and arson attack. Cultists -- who often emulate the music and attitudes of American street-gang culture -- dominate several campuses with intimidation tactics. Sometimes they employ threats of murder or extortion for seemingly petty ransoms, like an "A" grade or a fraudulently written term paper. Unprotected students, professors and administrators are often forced to surrender whatever grades, goods and privileges that the cultists demand.

Until the massacre this month, OAU had been considered one of Nigeria's safest universities, due to student leaders' successful mobilization of the institution in resistance to the criminal gangs. In 1991 after one cultist was stabbed to death and another was shot in an attempted kidnapping, the cults seemed to retreat, but student leaders continued to look for signs of illegal activity. Last February, a campus-wide search nabbed eight mobsters who were stockpiling machine guns and other dangerous weapons in their dorm rooms. Such behavior enraged the Black Ax criminal bosses. The News reported that a meeting held at Black Ax headquarters in Lagos enlisted recruits from other campuses nationwide for the following morning's assault, aimed at OAU student leaders in the targeted dorms. The secretary general of the Student's Union -- George Yemi Iwilade, aka "Comrade Afrika" -- was executed in his bed, his head summarily axed. The Student Union president -- Lanre Adeleke, aka "Legacy" -- narrowly escaped death by leaping from a balcony.

Next page | Vigilante justice: Students kidnap chancellor's wife