“THE DARKEST PLACES IN HELL ARE RESERVED FOR THOSE WHO MAINTAIN THEIR NEUTRALITY IN TIMES OF MORAL CRISIS” – Dante Alighieri
In these times of insanity, where great assault is launched on intellectualism, we stand up to say we are angry and we angrily remove this hypocritical Chinese mask of suffering and smiling. Our slit throats cry on and crushed limbs move on in this battle for truth, sanity, accountability and transparency. Our veins are filled with boiling blood, we are angry, very, very angry and so the battle begins.
| ALUMNI LECTURE AND THE SHOW OF SHAMEThe recent University of Ibadan Alumni Association organized lecture may have well rested in the seventh feet of our memory, however, I can’t help but ruminate on some confirmed madness still flowing in our veins. Histories and memories were recounted and the usual opposition reputation maiming went on. The ugly ones were busy pointing accusing fingers at their brothers who cling on to federal power at the moment. A lot of looted funds were donated amidst sycophantic jingles from our beloveth hungry squatters (students). The truth is that until the squatters are no longer hungry, the wrong set of the old folks will always get our alms vote. Our student union leaders are nothing to write home about. Our politicians may be called greedy-arrogant fellows, but the squatters are far worse than our politician after all, a hungry man is a dangerous man.
– AJAKAYE BASHIR MUSA
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| STILL ON GES 105When Prof. Wole Soyinka famously bellowed that the man dies in him that “keeps silence in the face of tyranny”, he was not only emphasizing tyranny as a mutilating and endemic system of government. What that quote means is that a well-discerning human being should learn to be vociferous in the face of any paralytic injustice or a general controversy regardless of the notifying and frightening consequences. The recent GES 105 result of The Faculty of The Social Sciences recently released by the examination body has been contentious and starkly disheartening. The result was reportedly awful and riotously unimpressive. It was a mass failure. No students in the Political science, Psychology, Economics and Geography scored above 45. It was only Sociology that performed excellently according to the vague results. What a metaphorical contradiction. The result outrightly betrayed the performance of the students. As a student with a fiendish predilection for GES courses, one never had below 65 in all the previous courses conducted by the examination body. Not even the complicated ‘Science and Mankind‘ which some students found inscrutable. The irregularity of the result has not only stultified us, it has also outrageously pulverized our C.G.P.A., and now it seems we need Jose Mourinho to help defend our staggering C.G.P.A. This is a confounding massacre on our academics. How is it possible for only one department to excel when we all received lectures in the large lecture theatre? Why will Sociology students solely passed and others failed? Was the computer culpable for the marking errors? How is it possible for one to score more in C.A than the exam especially in a multiple choice examination? There goes a sea of questions for the GSP. It is very disgusting and totally disapproving and unacceptable that the results did not correspond with our performance. We hereby beckon and exhort the examination body to re-visit and re-mark our scripts. Both automatic and manual methods should be used. The GSP authorities should forget any hope of compromise. We would never yield to any compromising or unfavourable resolutions. We want them to be largely pellucid about the result. We won’t accept what they say but what we see.- SOMIDE NICOLAS |
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| SMART BOARDS AND OUR ILLITERATE LECTURERSFew YEARS AGO, smart boards were installed in almost all the lecture rooms in the University of Ibadan. When I gained admission to study here in 2012, I thought this was the perfect place to study in Nigeria, considering the name and reputation of being the premier University. One of those things that caught my attention was the Smart Boards in the lecture rooms; I silently smiled to myself and said, “Wao, at last! I will be learning in the best university in the country, where modern learning facilities are present…” little did I know that they were for mere decorations! After more than three years in this great citadel of learning, no lecturer, I mean no lecturer had for once mistakenly taught me with the Smart Board, not even my learned Dean. Well, that may be pardoned, after all, they are all bunch of primitive and conservative fellows who have a high sense of Technophobia. However, what I can never pardon was seeing a civilized brutish GES lecturer in one of my GES 101 classes writing on this same Smart Board with a permanent marker! So annoying and disgusting. That may actually not be too bad compared to the madness I witnessed last week during my CLL 317 class where despite the fact that a notice which states “DO NOT WRITE ON THIS BOARD” was attached to the board, yet, I could still see writings of Dry-erasable marker all over the board! Seeing things like this would always make one think twice if some lecturers teaching in this University are actually worth teaching in a kindergarten at all. Such is the level of insanity that has ravaged the University system. If our learned lecturers and erudite professors find it very hard to change, I wonder if there can be anything close to progress in our educational system. After all, Alvin Toffler has said it all that “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” Without mincing words, most of our lecturers are stark illiterates!
– OREDOLA IBRAHIM |
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