ACCOMMODATION PROCESS IN UI – A CASE OF PUTTING THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE

image

On the 19th of March 2016, Daily Trust published news of a primary school in Zaria which had far more toilets than classrooms. If the case were that the classrooms in this school are enough to cater for the student population, one could have easily hosted the thought that perhaps the toilets exist as a source of Internally Generated Revenue. But this is far from the case. While the school looks after about 400 pupils, it has in its possession just three (3) classrooms. In a puzzling turn of events however, this same school contains as many as thirty-four 34 toilets – enough to serve all the faculties in the University of Ibadan and The Polytechnic Ibadan conjoined. As a matter of fact, the school only had two classrooms. But when they complained that the government was building only additional toilets, they got one extra to shut them up. Up till the moment, many of the students take their lessons under trees or on the veranda.

This tragi-comic report from Daily Trust though might elicit laughter from many; the administrative stupidity would still be forgiven (or overlooked at least) because people’s expectation from the government of the day is below sea level. But then, a similar crime is being committed annually by the Ivory Tower and we still welcome it with the same level of insouciance. This should not be!

What crime do we speak of here? It is none other than the crime of facile misplacement of priorities. The crime of electioneering after an election. The crime of spending more on propaganda than pro-people agenda. The crime of placing armament above educational improvement in the budget, in a time of peace. The inexcusable crime of putting the cart before the horse.

The university is in her 6th week of resumption. Lectures have started long ago. Some students have even started writing Continuous Assessment tests while others have received sundry threats from lecturers of imminent ones. Also, the time for course registration in many places has lapsed and defaulters are required to pay fines. But, the instant irony is that alongside all this turmoil, many bona fide students of the school are still yet to settle down. They attend lectures thinking about when legal occupants will come to dislodge them from their ‘refugee camp’, a place they once could call home. And they sit down in their ‘rooms’ to read with just one buttock, getting hypertensive at the slightest knock on the door. As sad as this is, it is not the crux of the day. It is a reality which regrettably might take as much time to leave as the taste of Artemether from a person’s buds.

The management and our wardens are always quick to explain that in this session, the school admitted up to 4008 students. But the question is why? Is it a directive from the Nigerian Universities Commission? If it is we should know, because nothing else can explain such an impolitic move. Why would a man who can hardly take cater for himself contract a second marriage? And why should a school which can hardly ensure the safety and welfare of its standing students go ahead and increase the annual dosage of intakes? There are no new buildings (in significant measure) and no new halls of residence; students receive lectures standing (in the Faculty of Arts and elsewhere). Yet the school goes ahead to jump from admitting 2,839 students in 2012 to admitting 4,008 in 2016. What has changed in those four years?  Is this not a classic case of biting more than you can chew?
More importantly, asides the foundational problem of ‘over-biting’, there is the problem (as earlier noted) of misplacement of priorities. We understand that we have an upsurge in the influx of freshmen. We understand that the demand for bedspace far outweighs the supply. And we understand that the resources are scarce (though not necessarily). But we fail to understand why the resources have not been distributed in accordance with the ‘common-sensical’ economic theory of scale of preference. We do not understand why a person with a letter from the Vice Chancellor should be considered above another who is the best in his department or who is serving the hall in one capacity or the other.

In this hall for instance, we find that out of the 114 names released on the 7th of February, many belonged to the camp of epistolary emissaries – persons with letters from all sorts of personalities ranging from the sub-dean of a faculty to the Vice Chancellor of the school. They get accommodated simply because they know someone who knows someone. And this is to the detriment of those who really matter, those who sacrifice a first class degree on the altar of the hall’s advancement. They include the Literary and Debating Society members, the Hall Legislators, the Hall Pressmen, the sportsmen and so on. These people ought to be considered first any time any day because they contribute more to the hall by virtue of their positions. This may not be the convenient thing to do but it is the right thing to do. It is only right that we are able to demand from the society just as much as we give to the society.

Another thing is that the said list reeked of dubious anonymity just as the admission process of the university has now degenerated into suspicious secrecy. Names were simply released without indication of the sponsors of the persons listed. We just hope this was as a result of clerical indolence and not deliberate mischievousness; but whichever it is, it is still unpardonable. We have to return to the old, transparent order… And by the way, there are even reports that in Sultan Bello, the student security team was not approved for accommodation of its members. Please be the judge – can there possibly be anything more preposterous?

To wrap things up, we were able to get hold of the 2012 Annual Report of the University of Ibadan. And in page 2 of that document, it is stated that;

One major challenge here (i.e. the university) is the accommodation of female students whose enrolment has been increasing over the years while the number of the halls of residence remains almost constant. The University has, however, made it a policy that all undergraduate new intakes must have accommodation on campus. It is also making efforts to improve on the proportion of students being accommodated. Constructing additional hostels especially for females has become a major priority. This is being tackled by engaging private partnership in building hostel accommodation on Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) basis.

The problem with this paragraph is bifacial. One is that, through it, the university claimed as far back as 2012 that it is engaging private partnership in building hostel accommodation on a BOT basis. Interestingly, in the Vice Chancellor’s address at the Matriculation Ceremony just a few days ago, Professor Idowu Olayinka also stated that; ‘it (i.e. the university management has overtime engaged private entrepreneurs to build hostels on a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) arrangement’. The question begging for answers is therefore – how long will take to build these BOT-hostels. Forever? Or could it be that the school is building a ‘Burj Khalifa’ for us – the tallest skyscraper in the world which took five (5) years to build. If so, then half-doxology! If additionally it is the case that when these ‘Burj Khalifas’ are finally completed, they would be affordable and accessible to the average UIte, then we say full-doxology.

Till next time…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *