SECURITY LAXITY IN THE TEACHING HOSPITAL, UNIVERSITY OF LAGOS

Security is defined as measures that are taken to protect a place, or to ensure that only people with permission enter or leave it. Security in CMUL/LUTH is of utmost importance because it keeps the students, staff,  health workers and patients safe from potential harm, and free from worry that they might be attacked at anytime. However, the security in the school and hospital environment is not as firm and as good as it use to be! Students no longer feel safe returning to their hostels after night calls, reading late at night in the reading room for fear that their laptops, phones and tablets would be stolen, female students are scared of reading alone for fear of sexual assaults, the security guards no longer as rigorous and strict as before – some might even have psychological deficit as evident by their interactions – therefore posing threat to people around and making them vulnerable to attacks. Here is a story of an occurrence to buttress these observations.

Few weeks ago, at about 4:00 am in the morning, a burglar jumped the fence behind the boys hostel and successfully entered the hostel compound. In order to get into his targeted room, he had to make up a strategy to overcome the obstacle he was faced with, which in this case, was a large net that served as a barricade between the compound and the block located on the ground floor. After tearing the net without been seen, he was able to get into the hostel, and enter through the back door of the targeted room.

Fortunately for the burglar, the four occupants of the room were fast asleep and their gadgets were at the mercy of the unwanted guest. He eventually got away with two laptops (one hp and one Asus model), and two phones (one iPhone 6 and one Camon C9) with no one to notice him during his activities. This was an unfortunate event that could have been avoided!

What was the response of the hostel porters? During the investigations of this case, it was confirmed that the suspected burglar was not a student of the College of Medicine, University of Lagos, and that he armed with a sharp object which he used to tear the net that allowed him gain entrance to the hostel block on the ground floor. It was also discovered that after his operation, he passed the bag of gadgets through a hole under the fence and jumped the fence to get out. Because no one really saw what he looked like, there was no evidence with which he could be traced.

The porters blamed the victims of the theft, saying that they were careless because none of them noticed a stranger get into the room to rob them and because they did not report the case of the spoilt back door which could not be closed and thus enabled the burglar gain entrance into the room easily. In summary, there was no extra precautions put in place by the security personnel to ensure that there would be no re-occurrence of such incidence. This shows that students do not feel as safe as before even in the comfort of their rooms which should not be, therefore to reduce the activities of theft, sexual assaults and physical assaults, it would be very necessary to tighten security measures to ensure the safety of everyone.

Also, there has been cases of people who stop students in the college and teaching hospital environment to ask for directions, but end up collecting all they have on them in broad daylight and even sending some of the students back to their hostels to bring their other properties such as cash, ATM Cards for withdrawal, laptops and phones including their roommates properties too. This among many other security issues have been seen and raised in the university community and should all be attended to urgently by the appropriate authorities.