By: Kehinde Amusan
The lengthy curtain-raiser of the inter-faculty debate of Jaw War 5.0 saw the clash of faculties against faculties as battles were lost and champions were found and lauded at the peak of the event. To this end did Dr. Demola Lewis, the chief judge of the debate competition comment on the Jaw battles fought by gallant and erudite speakers or debaters representing different faculties on Thursday, 27th of September, 2018 at the Faculty of Science, Large Lecture Theatre(FLT), University of Ibadan.
The arguably biggest public speaking event in sub-sahara Africa, Jaw War (2018) recorded six rounds of Jaw battles, where two speakers from each faculty went against other two speakers from another faculty as they debate topics relevant in the 21st century Nigeria. After the long run of witty battles among the 12 participating faculties, 6 faculties emerged as winners of the preliminaries and a best loser was also sought. According to the released official newsletter of the preliminary of Jaw war 5.0 inter-faculty debate, “PUBLIC HEALTH (60.5) VS SOCIAL SCIENCES (70.583); TECHNOLOGY (69.1667) VS PHARMACY (68.333); LAW (68.333) VS SCIENCE (69.5); DENTISTRY (52) VS ARTS (65.5); AGRIC & FORESTRY (60.75) VS VET MEDICINE (65.25); CLINICAL SCIENCE (67.58333) VS EDUCATION (78).” To break the tie between Faculty of Law and Pharmacy who had the same score as noted above, it was however noted in the newsletter that Faculty of Law qualifies for “the next round as the best loser after an impromptu against Faculty of Pharmacy to determine whom the best loser would be.” It was added that “the scores for the impromptu are as follows: Law (53.83333333) Pharmacy (43.66).”
The chief judge of the competition, Dr. Demola Lewis in his comment disclosed that the school management incorporated Jaw war 2018 into the events marking the 70th anniversary of University of Ibadan. According to him, “this is all part of he 70th anniversary.” Speaking of claims or assertions made in the debate competition that can be argued or contested, he told the debaters to be definite with their claims. According to him, “you can’t just claim that, the fact that you have a process that the process is completely objective.” He added that the speakers “can not just be conjectural.” He further noted that for the speakers’ argumentation, they need not speak for both frames of a topic. “You speak for your own frame.”, he added.
Dr. Demola equally corrected some mispronunciations and grammatical errors. However, he commended the delivery of the speakers from the Faculty of Education as well as that of the first speaker from the clinical sciences.
