FINE AND ITS UGLY FACES IN AWO HALL, UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN

Yesterday, I came back to my hall of residence exhausted from tedious classroom activities. Immediately I stepped into the room, my roommate called my attention to a notice which stated:

“This is to notify you of your contravention of the rules of residence as follows: messing up the bathroom. You are hereby requested to pay one thousand naira in to this A/C No. 7/551/70 within 24 hours of this notice”.

In all honesty, I couldn’t recall ever messing up the bathroom. When I sought the root of the fine, my roommate told me that someone had defecated in the bathroom and since there was no culprit, everyone had to pay for it.

It was quite disturbing that I was asked to pay an outrageous sum for an offence that I did not commit, but the fact that someone who had to answer to nature’s call with nowhere else to turn to but the bathroom came as no surprise at all. In as much as the student’s stupid child like act is not justifiable by any degree, however, it cannot be entirely blamed on the student.

The subtle but annoying increase in the number of students occupying a room has put more pressure on the already existing over-pressured inadequate facilities. On every floor with ten rooms on the finalist block, built to house two students each in Obafemi Awolowo Hall, there are four toilets-with two functioning- and six cubicle bathrooms- with two in fairly favourable conditions. Twenty students were originally meant to share them, but with this annoying increase, over forty students now share them including fresh, sophomore and semi-finalists students from other blocks whose toilets are death trap. This trend obtains not only in the hall where we have to struggle to make progress, but in other halls of residence in the University of Ibadan.

awo hall, university of ibadan

This apocalyptic situation is further aggravated by the incessant power supply. The absence of electrical power supply in this generation means the absence of life thus leaving chaos to rule. Besides the near impossibility of doing the necessary day to day activities like reading, doing assignments, cooking meals, ironing etc, water supply is next to nothing as the already faulty pumping machines cannot function at all. Getting a bucket of water to take a bath in Awo hall is near impossible not to mention getting enough to flush the clogged toilets as well.

Probably the student in question was hard pressed and wanted to use the toilet with only enough water to conduct a sprinkling of water baptism on her backside. She gets to the toilet and finds it half-full with all shades and structure of feaces generously displayed – even on the floor and across the toilet seat. On top of that, there is a sacred feast of worms as well as their goons of gigantic flies standing guard with bullets of poisonous buzz. I am very sure that the student ran out of the slaughter house with all the hairs on her body parts standing to their very ends and screaming at the top of their choked voices ‘save our souls’. What could she have done? Could she have left the hostel for a nearby bush to do her business and leave her life at the mercy of snakes, scorpion and other deadly insects? Or she should have just gone to other toilets in the hall when the same fate awaited her? As a UIte that she is, she chose the option that did not necessarily threaten her life. Perhaps, she may have also chosen this option in an attempt to draw the attention of the hall management since they have turned a blind eye to the situation and have refused to acknowledge the fact that the creatures residing in the hall are human beings who need some basic facilities in order to display civility.

Apparently, the student in question was highly successful in drawing the attention of the hall management, but not to a glorious end. The supervisor whom was thought would be a model of character, rationality and sound judgement, instead, on getting to the scene of event, ineptitude and arrogance took the centre stage. This is an archetype of what exists in the first and the best. He ordered the available occupants of the said floor to clean up the mess – which they did – after which a fine of one thousand naira per room was issued to the other student occupants who were either at lecture rooms or away from school. A punishment for what? For an offence that they were not even aware occurred? Or a punishment for the stupidity and the inability of the hall management to properly manage the rapidly dilapidating inadequate facilities? Instead of the hall management to think strategically on how to forestall such occurrence in the future, they are busy vying for every possible means to extort money from the already impoverished students.

What is the rationality behind the fine? To what end will fines be effective? Are the fines meant to discourage a reoccurrence of such misbehaviours when the necessary logistics to avert such has not been put in place? Moreover, the students being fined are innocent whereas the culprit could have been from another floor or block entirely. More so, if the 20,000 naira – or thereabout – fine is collected from the occupants on the said floor, what will it be used for? One can easily guess that embezzlement will be the fate of this extortion instead of it to be used to replace the bad toilets on the said floor.

N.B. This is not a fiction, it is a true story but because of the University of Ibadan management’s zero tolerance policy for criticism, we have decided to protect the writer.

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