Following the release of a video and pictures of some students in Convenant with their hair shaved in the middle, some ex-students of Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State, have criticised the institution for shaving the hair of their male students.
Some members of the alumni, as well as some Nigerians, took to the social media to call out the school following a viral video that captured students seated in a hall as a man used a hair clipper to pluck hair off the middle of their heads under the supervision of some staff members.
The school was also criticised for allegedly using a single unsterilised hair clipper on all the students on grounds that they might contract diseases in the process.
An alumnus, Okoli Offorbuike, said the action was disdainful and undermined the cliché “Kings and Queens” used for students at the university.
In one of his posts on Facebook on the matter, Offorbuike posted the pictures of the General Overseers of the Living Faith Church, Bishop David Oyedepo, and the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Worldwide, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, where the former wore Afro and the other kept hair.
He called on the university alumni to facilitate the inclusion of a law in the students’ handbook that would accord the students honour, dignity and respect.
He wrote, “After seeing this act carried out in my Alma Mater, I began to ask myself that maybe calling students kings and queens in Covenant University is just a mere cliché. The Bible says faith without work is dead. I will say Covenant University, without respect for the dignity of students, is no different from other universities”
“Where did the student affairs get the idea of shaving students’ hair off? This is one (Adeboye) of the leading fathers of faith in Africa, yet he keeps his hair…he is a king and heavily anointed and everyone agrees to that.
One Matthias Hungbo, who also claimed to be an alumnus, said there was nothing wrong with the students’ hair.
He said the shaving was in reaction to some students’ failure to take their Bibles for a service held the previous day.
“It’s appalling that people say keep to the rules and regulations, but in all honesty, there’s no rule as to what height of hair should be kept. It just says keep a low cut and the boys always keep their hair well. The management is just passing on its anger as a result of the embarrassment it faced in FT the previous day since some students didn’t bring Bibles. It is sad and even more sad because I feel nothing will be done about it,” he wrote on his Facebook wall.