BEHOLD OUR BELOVED UNION OF FILTH AND GRIME

Kanyinsola Olorunnisola

The recently-curtained Students’ Union Week was a relative success by many standards. One must indeed praise the executive council of the Union for presenting us with the flashiest of Weeks. In conjunction with the various committees, they conjured up a fine celebration filled with a galaxy of music stars, leaving a large number of us quite satisfied…for the most part. A few hitches here and there could not weaken the strength of the seven-day fiesta. The Vice President, Aderoju Okunsanmi is deserving of commendation. I give a thumbs up to the executive council. So, that has been said. But I am no sycophant. This article is not borne out of my humanitarian need to gift out compliments like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

Let these words register my discontentment, nay anger, with the state of our Union. When we begin to judge the success of an administration by the strength of a seven-day series of programmes, the dilapidation begins to make itself known. While we were making merry and crowning new Ivory royals, the corruption which is the gender of our scenario multiplied. The Union, including hall and faculty managements, is a collection of no-do-goods with frightening motives. Recent history has shown it to be a home of uncompassionstudentsate fellows. Just look how the MOTE saga was manipulated by many people with aspirations or how some SU presidential aspirants used the avenue of Mayowa Alaran’s death to campaign to the mass of people who came out to protest.

We should all be angry with the thoughtless, irrational, thuggish, self-centered and arrogant leaders whose excesses over the years have destroyed the collective image of the student-body. With a strong sense of entitlement, they turn public offices into private residences and share the money among their friends. It is even more maddening to think that prestigious organisations on campus award these pitiable excuses for students as exemplary leaders. After they go into the womb of darkness and slash our dues amongst themselves, they crawl back into daylight as pure heroes with clean sutannas. Because of such people, scars of corruption and insolence run deep into our flesh and no matter how much we try to stitch it up, the ugliness will always remain on our skins.

This reminds me of a passage I wrote once, for The Courtroom, in defense of the Assistant Hall Warden intrusion into student matters: OUR LEADERS BECAME THIEVES! They put the name of student unionism on a leash and dragged it helplessly in the mud. And the school administration, unwilling to watch these student-leaders continue to rob their fellow students in plain sight, chose to have a hand in the affairs.That remains the truth. Was it not only last year that the Great Independence Hall became the field for warfare between the Administrator General’s detractors and his followers? What would we say about the failed administration in the Department of Philosophy two sessions ago, when the President charged money for dinner and clothes, delivering nothing but an umbrella in harmattan season?

I would use the f-word in expressing my displeasure if only expletives were not so ungentlemanly and characteristic of lazy grammarians. Permit me to fully furnish your memory with the fast-forgotten fact that few fools can crumble an administration but when we wallow in the wisdom and the wicked ways of weed-headed multitude of leaders, they will surely sink the entirety of our Union.

Does it not scare you that before we call a Union congress, meant for the whole of the student-body, some mischievous people would have gathered to decide what the outcome would be before-hand? How can we progress when our congress is in distress? How can we win when we lean on filththe decision of a faction of the entirety of our society? Just when we have SDC letters flying about like conjunctivitis (or Apollo), it was beautifully decided that we should all focus on the Week first. After all, that is the important part, right?

I am enraged by the state of our Union. I am incensed! Before many of us can sign our course forms, we are forced to pay faculty and departmental dues. We then struggle to source for the money we never budgeted for. What becomes of these? Some boobs calling themselves presidents will then transfer our money into their bank accounts. How infuriating! Do not get this twisted, this is not an article that will turn out to have a positive ending. This is the rant of an angry Uite! This is the cry of a furious youth! The bleakness in our Union is far too much for me to don by cap of hope.

I am tired of experiencing the same charade over and over. I am sick of having to write about this topic repeatedly. I am exhausted from typing numerous essays about how broken the Union is. However, as long as corruption and mediocre leadership keep terrorising this campus, as long as power is used as a means to financial ends, as long as humble candidates become prideful officeholders, as long as our dinners keep flopping due to lackluster planning, as long as the Union leadership believes more in celebrating weeks than fighting for emancipation, believe me, I will keep writing.

Kanyinsola Olorunnisola

One Comment on “BEHOLD OUR BELOVED UNION OF FILTH AND GRIME”

  1. The state,their state, our state has deteriorated down beyond hell’s pit. Whenever I put my pen down to direct my sheet with messages, I have never had a good topic to write about our ‘United state’.
    Possibility of the future is almost turning to zero over one and in unionism,we still wallow within the death sentence of the Union.

    I believe scriveners will still be who they are and what they write.

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