A Federal High Court sitting in Ibadan has ordered the University of Ibadan to immediately reinstate three students who were suspended for displaying placards protesting against a tuition fee hike during a student union event in May 2024, ruling that the university's disciplinary process violated the principles of natural justice and the students' fundamental right to peaceful expression.
Justice Nkeonye Evelyn Maha, who delivered the ruling on Wednesday, April 15, 2026, set aside the decisions of the university's disciplinary committees and ordered the restoration of the full studentship of the three applicants, Aduwo Ayodele, Mide Gbadegesin and Nice Linus Adaoma, with effect from May 13, 2024, the date of the protest. The court also restrained the University of Ibadan and its agents from taking any further disciplinary steps against the students in relation to the protest.
The case arose from events on May 13, 2024, when the three students held placards bearing the inscription "Fees Must Fall" during the inauguration ceremony of the newly elected Students' Union executive held at Trenchard Hall on the university's campus. The students said their action was entirely peaceful and that they had no intention of disrupting the event, but they were forcibly removed from the venue by university security personnel and, according to court filings, assaulted before being handed over to Operation Burst, a military-police joint unit operating in Oyo State, at a facility in Agodi, Ibadan. The university thereafter initiated formal disciplinary proceedings against them, and by July 2025, two of the students, Ayodele and Gbadegesin, had been rusticated for four semesters, a sanction scheduled to run from the second semester of the 2024/2025 academic session through to the end of the first semester of the 2026/2027 session.
The students, through their counsel Adedayo Ajani, challenged the suspensions in court as a fundamental rights violation, arguing that their actions amounted to a constitutionally protected exercise of the right to peaceful assembly and expression, and that the punishment meted out to them was excessive, disproportionate and designed to silence legitimate student dissent over the rising cost of education at the country's premier university. They also alleged that they faced ongoing intimidation and surveillance in the aftermath of the incident.
Justice Maha, in her ruling, agreed with the students on the central questions before the court. She found that the university's disciplinary panel had failed to establish that the students disrupted the inauguration ceremony in any meaningful way, and held that the process leading to their suspension violated the fundamental principles of natural justice. "I hereby set aside the decision of the institution's disciplinary committee and order the reinstatement of the suspended students and as well restore their full studentship from May 13, 2024," the judge declared.
In a separate but related matter, the third student, Nice Linus, is also challenging the university's refusal to inaugurate her as a member of the Students' Representative Council despite her electoral victory, with the university claiming her participation in the election was invalid because she was already facing disciplinary proceedings at the time. That case remains before the court. Civil society groups including the Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa praised the ruling and called on the university to apologise to the students, while warning that the pattern of repressing student activism over fee-related protests was becoming a broader and deeply troubling trend across Nigerian universities.
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