LIBREVILLE
Students at Libreville's Universite Omar Bongo in Gabon have suspended a three-month boycott of classes and street demonstrations in protest at the absence of computers and internet facilities.
Classes have resumed but an atmosphere of uncertainty and bitterness pervades the campus.
Led by Omar Koudou, president of the radical Groupement des etudiants pour l'intervention directe de l'universite, the students originally decided to boycott classes after the failure of the vice-chancellor, Bonaventure Mondo, to provide the computers in line with an earlier agreement.
During one demonstration, the students seized about six government vehicles and threatened to auction them in order "to equip their classrooms, laboratories and library with computer facilities with the proceeds of the sale of those vehicles".
The violent confrontation with security agents spread to the campus - ironically damaging the few existing computer facilities in the process. The vice-chancellor was virtually in tears when he took journalists on an inspection tour of the campus to assess the damage.
University authorities blamed the students for the destruction. But the students in turn accused the police. "Does it make sense to anybody that while we are clamouring for sophisticated computer facilities, we students are being accused of destroying our own instruments of learning and research? Of course it does not make any sense. The police should be held responsible for destroying the computer hardware," Mr Koudou said.
Among the equipment destroyed were computers at the prestigious language laboratory of oral tradition and Bantu civilisation, and some computers at the university's central library.
Guillaume Montou, the university's deputy vice-chancellor, said: "One of the most painful acts of vandalism inflicted by the students on university property is the stealing of a particular computer in the library, which contains about 37,000 titles of books, journals and other relevant documents. It took a Canadian computer programmer six months to assemble and program all this useful information into the computer. All that is gone."
Students also complain that the university is being expected to house 6,000 students compared with the 1,000 for which it was built.
"No single room has been added," Obiang Essono, a former student leader and now a lecturer at the university, said. "Some of us warned the university authorities about the need to expand existing infrastructure in order to avoid the violent reactions of frustrated young students."
The students had hoped that their grievances would be addressed by the country's president, after whom the university is named, following his re-election for a seven-year term.
But after 12 weeks of lecture boycotts, the students decided to suspend the strike to avoid every one of them having to repeat the academic year.
The students promised to resume the boycott, however, if some of their demands, particularly computer installation, were not met. "We want to enter the third millennium as computer literates," declared Joseph Kombila, a student leader.