LAUTECH Students Shut Down Ogbomoso Campus Over ‘Illegal’ Breakup of Medical Departments

The academic atmosphere at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso, turned volatile on Tuesday as hundreds of students blocked the university’s main gate, effectively grounding all administrative and academic activities. The protest is a direct response to a “surgical” move by the University Senate to rip the Departments of Anatomy and Physiology out of the College of Health Sciences.

Wielding placards and chanting solidarity songs, the students described the relocation to the Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences as a “systemic demotion” of their professional future. According to the protesters, the university’s decision, communicated via a memo from the Registrar, Mrs. Olayinka Balogun, threatens to strip their degrees of their clinical relevance and prestige.

“Physiology belongs to medicine, not just pure science,” one student leader shouted over the crowd. “You cannot move the heart away from the body and expect it to still beat. This decision was made without considering the professional impact on our licenses and the integrity of the medical school.”

The Senate had approved the move during its meeting on January 21, 2026, citing a need for “ease of career progression” for non-medical staff and better faculty alignment. However, the students view this as a bureaucratic experiment that uses their education as a lab rat.

This latest “State of Harmony” crisis comes at a sensitive time for the institution, which has already been grappling with complaints from its Iseyin satellite campus regarding “theory-only” agricultural training. While the University management has called for “cooperation for a smooth transition,” the students have made their position clear: the gates of the Ogbomoso campus will remain locked until the medical departments are returned to their “rightful home” in the College of Health Sciences.