Labone Secondary School closed down
The Labone Secondary School in Accra was closed down on Monday, following the violent clash between students of the school and their counterparts of St Thomas Aquinas Secondary School at the weekend.
The school went on recess three days ahead of its scheduled closing date. Police patrol teams have been detailed to the two schools to maintain peace and order on their premises.
Last Friday, students of the two schools clashed, resulting in a student from Aquinas sustaining very severe injuries. Five of the students of Aquinas were arrested to help the police in their investigations.
An assistant headmaster of the school, Mr Daniel Mohenu, said in an interview that a day after the clash, there were rumours that one of the Aquinas students who sustained injury in the clash had died in hospital.
The rumours also had it that the Aquinas students were planning to avenge the death of their colleague, by mobilising support from one of the suburbs where the victim comes from to attack Labone students.
Mr Mohenu said as a result of the rumours, “the Labone students also armed themselves to the teeth, with cutlasses they had sharpened all nightlong, in preparedness for the clash with the Aquinas boys”.
He said the situation heightened tension while the atmosphere of uncertainties that existed was not conducive to learning.
The assistant headmaster said the closure came when the terminal examinations for the final year students and class tests for the juniors were in progress.
“But we think it is safer they go home now and come back next term to write their last papers”, he explained. He could not tell whether the clash was the result of a bitter rivalry between the male students of the school and the Aquinas boys over female students of Labone, as was being rumoured.
During a visit to the Labone Secondary School, parents had arrived on the campus in private cars and chartered taxies to take their children home.
But for the presence of the police patrol team, the atmosphere looked normal. At the St Thomas Aquinas Secondary School, the Assistant Headmaster, Mr Okyere Ababio, dismissed the rumour of the death of the student as untrue.
“We have not received any such report and we do not know who is peddling the rumour”, he said. As a day school, classes were not in session at the time journalists visited the school on Monday because of the public holiday.
Sources at the Cantonments Police Station and the Accra Police Regional Command could also not confirm the rumours. Mr Ababio said the school will break for the Christmas holidays on Thursday as scheduled.
Maru Andan who reportedly led the students to avenge an attack on a colleague, was nearly lynched. According to reports, some of the Labone students sustained various degrees of injury, and were treated and discharged at a nearby hospital.
Andan, who bled profusely from head injuries he sustained, was rushed to a hospital for emergency attention. An eye witness account said the disturbances began at about 2.30 pm, when about 30 Aquinas students besieged the premises of Labone Secondary School, to teach them a lesson for supporting Accra Academy students during a fight between Accra Academy and Aquinas.
The Aquinas students were alleged to have injured the security officer who tried to stop them from entering the school premises. In the process they destroyed the school’s gate, lights and other property.
The Accra Regional Police Commander, Dr K.K. Manfo said in an interview that the case was being investigated. “Our investigations so far seem to suggest a very trivial and ridiculous cause for the clash. It seems they were actually fighting over girls”, he said.
Aquinas Secondary School is a Catholic boy’s day school, while Labone Secondary is mixed and also has boarding facilities.
There are other versions of the reason for the clash.
It is said that because of the deep-rooted rivalry between Aquinas and Accra Academy, also a boy school, students of Aquinas felt slighted when it was rumoured that Labone girls now prefer Academy boys.
Sources said as a result of this development, Academy students were said to have supported Labone students during a scuffle between Aquinas and Labone.
The sources also said the Aquinas students attacked the Labone students because an assistant headmaster of Labone had called Aquinas students “bush boys”.
Others said the misunderstanding arose over the use of the Science Resource Centre at Aquinas by the Labone students. They said before the clash on Friday, Labone students who came to the Aquinas Science Resource Centre went on rampage and caused damage to some structures on the compound, for which Aquinas students decided to avenge.