The hospital authorities said all injured students were treated or referred with no deaths recorded at the facility, blaming the unrest on a brief delay caused by an overwhelmed lone nurse.
A video circulating online on Monday shows students of the University of Cross River State (UNICROSS) protesting in Calabar, with some vandalising hospital property.
PREMIUM TIMES reported that the crash claimed four lives.
The injured students were taken to different health facilities, including a General Hospital in Calabar.
In the video seen by PREMIUM TIMES, some protesters were destroying a hospital bus, smashing windows, pulling down the facility’s signpost and disrupting activities within the hospital premises.
Another video showed the protesters moving towards the Government House, where gunshots were heard in the background, although the circumstances surrounding the gunfire remain unclear.
Attempts to reach the Cross River State Commissioner for Health, Egbe Ayuk, were unsuccessful as calls to his phone line were not going through.
The hospital’s General Superintendent, Kenneth Takim, referred our reporter to the Director of Nursing Services, Oguji Fabian.
Ms Fabian said the hospital promptly attended to the injured students and recorded no deaths.
“They met one nurse manning the emergency unit. You know the state of employment in Nigeria. The nurse was overwhelmed by the number of students that came in and the number of casualties brought in,” she said.
“They were not dead but wounded. As the nurse stepped out to call us to mobilise more staff who were still within the facility, some students began to complain they were not being attended to.”
She added that the situation escalated shortly after.
“That was when they started to move the vehicle. By the time we came out, the first batch had left while another set was arriving, and we immediately began attending to them,” she said.
Ms Fabian said none of the injured students died at the hospital.
“Six of the casualties were transferred to the teaching hospital with our ambulance by the General Superintendent. The others were treated and discharged. None of them died in the general hospital,” she said, adding that the fatalities recorded occurred at the scene of the accident.
In a statement, the police spokesperson in Cross River, Eitokpah Sunday, said claims that officers shot at protesters were false.
Mr Sunday, an assistant superintendent of police, said the protest, which began peacefully, later turned violent, with some students vandalising hospital property, including an ambulance, windows and signposts.
He said officers deployed to the scene exercised restraint and adopted non-lethal measures to manage the crowd.
The statement also stated that protesters later moved to the Government House, where security personnel used smoke canisters to disperse the crowd after some protesters attempted to force entry into the premises.
The police said no fatalities were recorded during the protest.
According to the statement, calm was restored after government officials, including the Deputy Governor, Peter Odey, engaged with student representatives.
