MONROVIA – Former Solicitor General of Liberia Cllr. Sayma Syrenius Cephus is calling on the University of Liberia through its President Professor Dr. Julius Sarwolo Nelson Jr., to investigate the February 10, 2023 attack on his person, and in so doing, rid the University of those “miscreants, social misfits and hoodlums purporting to be students” who attacked him when he visited the University of Liberia to attend to some personal business.
According to former SG Cephas, he had gone to visit the University of Liberia Main Campus on the Capitol Bye Pass, as a graduate of the William R. Tolbert Jr., College of Agriculture College and Forestry, to gather some information about a newly established degree program in fisheries when he got rudely attacked by a group of students purportedly under the aegis of the Students Unification Party (SUP).
In his letter of complaint to UL President Nelson, Cllr. Cephas said the incident occurred when he parked my vehicle towards the former girls dormitory, and while awaiting the information, he heard someone yelling in an abrasive tone his my name, and in split seconds, he saw a posse of men armed with rocks and sticks surging towards my vehicle and chanting “rogue, rogue, Syrenius Cephus, rogue, rogue;” and then they started to violently bang on his vehicle, “some using rocks, and others with sticks”.
“Moreover, as I gradually reversed from the girls’ dormitory in an attempt to turn around, I heard a voice in the crowd saying “let us mob him to death,” and as I tried to disembark from my vehicle to plead with them to see reason to stop, the crowd swelled violently, and foaming with terror, they encircled my vehicle and began to attack me from all sides as I drove out of the campus.
“Mr. President, I am still feeling distraught, and quite speechless in the aftermath of this terror and near-death experience. I didn’t see this coming, and I never thought that the University of Liberia is now home to this kind of primitive behavior. As intellectual trained by the University of Liberia I feel deeply baffled not just by the scale of the attacks on my person, my life and vehicle on mere allegations but by the fact that such crude and barbaric conduct has occurred not in the ghetto or slums but on the main campus of the University of Liberia that has a long and enviable history of being a “light in darkness” and a bastion of sound reasoning, frank and brutal exchanges of issues and debates absent violence.
“That said, it didn’t occur to me that the University of Liberia has been ‘ghettoized’ at the expense of tolerance and freedom of expression by wretched thugs, goons and hooligans who have cleverly masked out their impotencies and viciousness under the guise of being students and are using the premises of the university as a breeding ground for terror and mayhem against innocent people.
“Mr. President, it is saddened to say that I was violently clubbed and mobbed with stones and sticks on account of being on US Treasury Department sanctions absent any investigation or incontrovertible evidence consistent with due process. This is not the University of Liberia that we all know; and this is not the University of Liberia where I was trained both as an agronomist and a lawyer.
“While I still plead my innocence to these scathing sanctions unduly imposed upon me, and strongly believe that I am innocent, and quite certain that history will be kind to me, I humbly request that the university authorities should not only condemn in the strongest terms these medieval rebel-styled actions and activities embarked upon by a gang of mendacious ghouls and political pranksters but will take the most appropriate administrative actions consistent with its handbook to arrest its revered premises from being reduced to a terror infrastructure.
“In light of this, it is my prayer that your good offices will order an immediate investigation into this ugly incident in order to rid the University of these Miscreants, social misfits and hoodlums purporting to be students,” Cllr. Cephas pleaded.
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