The vaccine scare, which threw most parents in Rivers State into panic on Tuesday, may have come and gone, but an 11-year-old pupil, Michael Olusola, still bears the pain of the false alarm allegedly raised by some unknown persons.
Olusola, a primary six pupil of Government Primary School, Igwuruta, Port Harcourt, was among three children injured as a result of the scare that caused so much panic in the state.
He was said to have sustained a severe injury on his left hand when he attempted to jump the fence to avoid being innoculated with a deadly substance.
It was gathered that some miscreants had taken advantage of the situation to break into the only school gate before gaining entrance into the premises.
The pupils, who saw the hoodlums destroy their computers and other equipment, believed that they (hoodlums) would come after them and they decided to escape through the fence.
The Headmistress of the school, Mrs. Cordelia Amadi, said that the school authority was not aware that one of the pupils had been injured while trying to scale the fence during the rowdy situation within the premises.
Amadi said, “I was in the office on Tuesday when some parents came and said that they heard that in Owerri that some soldiers were entering schools and forcefully injecting children. The parents insisted that they wanted to take their children back home.
“I told them that no soldier would enter the school without invitation and that the school would not allow the children to go until 1pm. But before you knew what was happening, some miscreants broke the gate and entered the school premises.
“They (miscreants) destroyed computers and some other equipment in school. Even when the State commissioner for education came in to tell the parents that the information they got was false, the parents still did not believe him.
“After the incident, about seven students were left behind and a woman came and said she was looking for her son. Then one of our teachers told me that a boy was injured and he was seen running home with the wound. A Good Samaritan saw the boy and rushed him to a clinic.”
Explaining that she had visited the hospital where young Olusola is currently responding to treatment, Amadi added that he had also called the child’s father to express the school’s heartfelt sympathy to him and his family.
The boy’s father, Mr. Sunkami Olusola, expressed sadness that his son sustained a serious injury that made the doctors and other health workers at Deparaclek Specialist Hospital to stitch his hand.
He also disclosed that two other pupils were among those that tried to leave the school because of the rumour that some soldiers were coming to inject them with a poisonous vaccine and they got injured in the process.
Many pupils and students, as well as their parents and guardians, had panicked when it was rumoured in Rivers and Ondo states that some soldiers were going into private and public schools to forcefully inject children with a poisonous substance.
