PH
Kaimosi Friends University College students have boycotted classes citing attacks from locals for registering as voters in the region.
The students say a section of locals have not been happy with them for registering as voters noting that some politicians were ‘buying’ them out.
“Students have been attacked by the neighbouring community while leaving college for their hostels located outside the institution. Four of them are nursing injuries now,” Jack Onyango, students’ security director at the college said.
He added, “The community is politically programmed to hate us for registering as voters here.”
Onyango noted over 200 students who come from different regions had registered as voters at three different polling stations including Kaimosi primary school, Cheptulu market and Kaimosi special school.
“This has created animosity with the neighbouring community that believes we will trigger change in the voting pattern and favour certain candidates,” he said.
He defended their decision to register as voters in Vihiga because the 2017 General Elections may find them while in school.
The university principal Prof Jack Nandi however dispelled allegations that attacks were linked to voter registration.
“The students are not going to their hostels earlier enough and that may pose a risk to them during late hours by being attacked by certain individuals,” he said.
He warned that boycotting classes amounts to students wasting their own time for study as the school programmes were on.
He noted that they were in dialogue with the students so as to allow for sobriety in the handling of the issue.
The university college that has over 600 students was established two years ago, and gazetted last year where it had its first admission.
