By: William Olaleye
The Students’ Representative Council, University of Ibadan had it’s sitting on Saturday May 10, 2025 at the Students’ Representative Council (SRC) Chamber, University of Ibadan.
This sitting was held to address the state of the Union, swear-in co-opted members, and hear constituency reports.
The sitting commenced at 10:00am, at which time the House Clerk read the minutes of the last sitting.
Following the reading, the President of the Student Union, Covenant Odedele was called forward to present a report on the state of the Union to the House.
Addressing the sitting, Mr. Odedele highlighted the issues his administration had tackled since it’s inauguration.
He spoke about security concerns they had addressed, electricity issues, Nelfund loan issues and school fee refund issues.
“The power supply on campus has been really good. In cases when we had challenges with power supply, we intervened swiftly and tried as much as possible to reduce the response time to all of these issues” he stated as regards electricity on campus.
He informed the House of his office’s intervention during the MCDAN Strike and how they were able to resolve it.
He further mentioned that his Executive Council had visited prominent stakeholders in security management in and around UI and Agbowo.
“We visited every stakeholder to ensure that Agbowo-UI is duly decluttered. I can confirm that the traffic light is working better than before, courtesy of our intervention” he told the house.
He further stated that his office had addressed student concerns regarding fraudulent scam agents and that culprits had been apprehended and are currently awaiting prosecution.
Moving on to the issue of fee increase and discrepancies, the President mentioned that his office was working daily to ensure that these issues were promptly dealt with.
“We’re pushing for a meeting where a representative of the school management gets to address these issues. We have requested for a meeting.”
Following the report of the President of the Student Union, Covenant Odedele on the state of the union, Honourable Members of the house cross-examined his report.
Honourable Oladele Samuel representing Alexandra Brown Hall Constituency questioned the President extensively regarding the response to the issues of school fees and Nelfund.
Another Honourable stated that the President had only mentioned discrepancies throughout his speech without any actual mention of the increase in fees.
Responding to the questions, the President stated that not all faculties had the challenges of the school fees issue.
He emphasized that the complaints made “is that two people in the same level are paying different school fees.”
According to him, he had also sat with the student management to go through the fee breakdown, yet he couldn’t find any notable increase in fees.
He stated also that the only increase was on the GES fees and Sports fees.
“In the evidence we’ve gathered working with leaders of constituencies, we cannot say, per se that there is a hike, but we can say there are discrepancies. We don’t have enough evidence to support (the hike claim).”
He added that he had received help from various Faculty Presidents who provided him with fees paid by students across the last two sessions and juxtaposed them with the present fee levels.
He noted that they discovered discrepancies which they found, and “the administration admitted discrepancies we identified.”
Speaking further, he answered questions regarding the disappearing fee s and refund from student wallets.
He advised affected students to write letters to the Bursary so their names could be collated.
Honourable members made suggestions as to the solutions to the school fee issues with some calling for a suspension of the deadline, and others asking that the House call a Congress.
However, Honourable Oladele suggested that there was no need to request suspension if the deadline yet.
“Why do we need to suspend the deadline? Let us appeal to them, we saw an increment and we want it rectified in the next 3 or 2 working days, give them a deadline” he stated.
“The first stage is not the suspension of the deadline. Let us access the problem, engage in proper documentation. Within the two or three working days let the portal be shut dow, people should stop paying fees.”
He concluded.The house moved the motion that a congress be held on Saturday, May 17th, and that members of the school management be excluded from the congress.
Other items on the agenda included the adoption of the budget for Freshers Week, the swearing in of co-opted members and the hearing of the Constituency Reports.
