LAGOS Students at one of Nigeria's premier universities protested an announcement renaming the school on Tuesday by President Goodluck Jonathan, saying that while the institution has been neglected, its name is still a famous brand they want to hang on to.The president announced on state-run television that the University of Lagos popularly known as UNILAG would be renamed Moshood Abiola University in honour of Bashorun MKO Abiola.
Abiola was a successful businessman widely believed to be the winner of a 1993 presidential poll annulled by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida. Babangida's military successor, Gen. Sani Abacha, then jailed Abiola, who died in detention in 1998.
The name change is meant to honour Abiola's "martyrdom," Jonathan said, on a public holiday marking the West African nation's 13th year of uninterrupted democracy.
Within a couple of hours of the announcement, however, hundreds of students had flocked to the university's main gates, some in flip flops, hair nets, and even pajamas.
The university is a federal government university with its main campus at Akoka, and a college of medicine located at Idi-Araba, all in Lagos.
The University of Lagos was founded in 1962, about two years after Nigeria gained its independence.
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