Their blockade of Airport Road, at least a hundred metres from the school gates, was dismantled by security shortly before noon.The protest disrupted scheduled exams for thousands of distance learning students for a second day.The exams are not likely to hold until next week at the earliest reschedule, Daily Trust has learnt.Security fired gunshots and teargas to disperse student crowds from the protest site, witnesses said.Police, army and a naval unit were among security deployed to hold the junction.Its gates were manned by groups ofmen in mufti, armed with sticks, whom students accuse of assault on the first day of protests on Monday.Daily Trust reporter at the scene went through the armed men, along with full time students, to get access into the school, where activities have shut down.Medical students, protesting for thefirst time over Uniabuja's medical programme lacking accreditation by Medical and Dental Council, accuse the school management of attempts to silence them by deploying "touts" to attack them.Students have also demanded N10million each in compensation for wasted years without hope of ever becoming doctors.One student injured in Monday's protest, said he was assaulted by one of the men armed with a cutlass.Uniabuja authorities have denied using force to keep the school gatesopen."As for beatings, the students were the ones that attacked a security personnel at the gate, wounding him seriously in the process," said the school's information officer Garba WaziriAt the same time it maintained heavy police presence at its mini campus in Gwagwalada.Teams of armed police blocked off traffic before and after Uniabuja's gates at Gwagwalada as the school senate met at noon.UPDATE – 2:30p.m:Uniabuja Senateends impromptu two-hour meeting,resolves that the distance-learning exams disrupted by two days of protest by medical students will continue but cannot immediately resolve the accreditation of its medical school. It also says accreditation is beyond its immediate power and dependent on NUC.
