Shadrack Bett, secretary general of the Technical Vocational Educational and Training Students Association (TVETSA), a student at Rift Valley National Polytechnic (RVIST), vividly remembers his first demonstration on campus.

For most of the week leading up to the demonstrations, we had been raising concerns with the school management about the inadequate facilities we had at the school, and yet we had an ever-increasing population of students.

We never really got sufficient feedback on the complaints we had raised and we decided to give the school proper notice to hold a peaceful demonstration.

By 9am on July 7, there was a heavy police presence at the school. The police were armed with riot gear.

As the day went by, students began to make their way to the administration block and at around 11am the headmaster, seeing the students, decided to come and address the crowd.

It was at this point that things turned bizarre. The police, seeing the unrest growing in the crowd, decided to fire into the air. At the sound of the first bullet, the students started to run for safety and soon we were all outside the school premises and in the Kabasis Centre.

For a while there was a standoff between us and the police who were inside the school. All the while, students were chanting and shouting at the police, who were firing tear gas canisters. Then the crowd started moving towards the Nakuru-Eldoret highway and at Ngata Bridge a group of students blocked the road by setting fire to tyres and throwing stones on the road.

It was then that I knew things had got serious, and for a while I must admit I was overwhelmed by the turn of events. For over an hour there was traffic on this section of the highway.

An internal memo from the headmaster was circulated through our emails and WhatsApp groups, informing us that the school had been closed.

Almost immediately we heard gunshots again, this time from one side of the traffic jam, and soon we saw police officers firing in our direction and had to retreat again. Tear gas canisters were thrown at us, while some police officers fired directly at the students.

It did not end there, the students retreated to their dormitories and the police followed them to the dormitories. It was a terrifying experience for us, you could hear women and children screaming at the sound of gunshots and the smell of tear gas filled the air.

No student would want to destroy school property because they all know that the cost of repairing the destroyed property would come out of their pockets.

Therefore, destroying school property is always out of the question and there is no need to use excessive force against students. As students on campus end up demonstrating because most of the time the administration does not take us seriously, but when they see you picketing, they realise that the matter is serious and needs immediate attention.

How night of unrest at Rift Valley National Polytechnic went from bad to worse

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Bret Sanya