Hours after a deadly attack claimed two lives at the main gate of the University of Benin on Sunday, the institution’s own anti-cult committee chairman has resigned, not in the wake of the violence, but because of what he says happened after he reported it.
The Venerable Egbenusi Osazee David, Chaplain of All Saints’ Chapel within the UNIBEN Ugbowo campus, has tendered his immediate resignation as Chairman of the Cult Renunciation, Reconciliation, Reformation, Rehabilitation and Interfaith Committee, known as the CR4IC, in a letter dated May 10, 2026, addressed directly to the Vice Chancellor.
The resignation letter, obtained exclusively by Truth Live News, contains allegations that strike at the heart of how UNIBEN’s leadership handled Sunday’s deadly incident.
According to the Venerable David, he received a clip related to suspected cult activity on campus earlier in the day and forwarded it to the Vice Chancellor with the message: “Good afternoon, dear VC. I just got this clip. I supposed it may be useful for your decisions and necessary action.”
Shortly after, gunshots rang out near the Chapel Vicarage. Two more clips showing a violent confrontation in which a person was killed in front of the school gate reached him, and he again forwarded them immediately to the Vice Chancellor.
What followed, he alleges, was not a response befitting the gravity of a student’s death. In the letter, the Chaplain writes that the Vice Chancellor telephoned him “furiously,” demanding that he delete the clips he had transmitted. He alleges the VC issued a countdown ultimatum beginning at five minutes, reduced to three, then two within which he was ordered to destroy the footage.
The Vice Chancellor allegedly threatened to report him to the head of the Anglican Communion, to deploy university security personnel to remove him from the Chapel Vicarage, and told him to “dare” him as Vice Chancellor.
The Chaplain in his response, “I have not deleted the said clips and shall not do so,” he wrote. “A human life was lost this evening. Whatever legal, investigative, or disciplinary processes that loss may properly trigger, within this institution or beyond it, require that evidence be preserved, not destroyed at the telephonic instruction of an administrator.”
The letter also dismantles what the Chaplain describes as a fundamental misunderstanding of his office. “The Chaplaincy of All Saints’ Chapel is not a department of the Vice Chancellor’s office,” he writes, noting that the Anglican Communion leader to whom the VC threatened to refer the matter is, in fact, his own ecclesiastical superior, not the Vice Chancellor’s. He confirmed that he had already briefed his Bishop before any other account could reach the church.
The resignation also lays bare a longer institutional failure. The Chaplain states that since his appointment as CR4IC Chairman, proposals aimed at advancing the committee’s mandate of curbing cultism had received no institutional response or implementation. “A committee whose considered recommendations are consistently left unaddressed ceases to be an instrument of change and risks becoming a veneer of institutional seriousness,” he wrote.
The timing of this resignation cannot be overstated. It comes on the same day that a final year Political Science student was shot dead in his vehicle at the UNIBEN main gate, a female passenger in the vehicle also died, and another female Biochemistry student is currently fighting for her life at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital. information confirmed to this reporter by a firsthand source on the ground.
The University of Benin management has so far only issued a statement distancing the institution from the attack and linking it to cult activities outside the campus. The Edo State Police Command has not issued an official statement as of the time of filing this report.
