“Pride and Precedent cannot overshadow reason” – Dan Brown, Angels and Demons
“I don’t like people that are not straightforward “ – Mr. Falaye Joseph, Business Manager, IBEDC, Ojoo Business Unit
“Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it! You know, I just ….*do* things” – The Joker, The Dark Night (Batman series)
Few weeks ago, I wrote in an opinion article published on the 27th of February that “this is not a good time to be a student. I don’t know if our past colleagues had it this bad during their days, I don’t know if our future colleagues will have it worse than this when their time comes, what I know is that the challenges we currently face as students of the Premier University are below the least standard of dignity and stateliness.” Fifteen days later, I still stand by my words. And it is even a worse time to be a student not because of the various woes that bedevil our intellectual community but because uncertainty has also come to the picture, in a grand style.
Nobody is sure of anything, Olayinka can’t state with precision where he is steering the ship of the Ivory Tower, crises everywhere and he’s even too confused to make any public statement to address us – his priorities. His indecisiveness has in turn inflicted the SAANU/NASU phenomenon that can’t state with precision whether it will hold a congress tomorrow or not, whether it will continue with the protest or not, whether it will strike or not, whether it will resume normal activities or not. It’s irresolution has yet in turn inflicted Tola, Chima and Danjuma – who are students of the university. Tomorrow is Monday, Tola is confused with whether the lecture rooms will be opened or not. Chima wants to plan for the day but he can’t because he doesn’t even know whether his lecturers will be coming to class or not. Danjuma, he already zeroed his mind that NASU will continue its demonstration and has decided to plan to work on his final year project but unfortunately, he’s not even sure if maintenance will allow the electricity to stay.
Tola logs on to Facebook to ask, “Is NASU still protesting?” Chima checks into his students’ whatsApp group to ask, “Will there be class tomorrow or not?” Danjuma picks his phone to ask a student leader, “What’s up with the power situation please, are we going home or not?” Unfortunately, no one can answer their question with such required precision, no one. You have a plan for your life, you have planned for your life, you want to plan for your life but you can’t because the people you have entrusted with your life are damn indecisive and insensitive to your plight. What can you do when you realise the people in administration here are like the Joker character in “The Dark Night” when he said to the city saver, Batman, “I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself.” The only way Tola, Chima and Danjuma can help the situation is obviously to also have no plans, sleep today with no plans, when you wake up tomorrow, things will sort out, themselves. What can even be certain again? You planned for Gift and ‘Deroju and Amanat will just come from nowhere to disrupt your plans. (My advice for you, don’t support anybody, don’t be like the Zikites, don’t endorse anybody, just continue living, on the election day, GOD WILL SHOW YOU WHERE TO GALLANTLY STAND)
Enough. The focus of this piece is on the state of power supply in the University community and management’s insincerity. On the 5th of March, it will be recalled that the students of the premier University marched to protest the inadequate and erratic power supply in the halls of residence. The next day, the school management called a meeting where the VC and his men tried to bamboozled the students’ leaders as to the state of power supply and other issues of concern. In the first part of this article, I detailed what happened at that meeting and for those that read I quoted his excellency, Prof. Aiyelari, the powerful DVC Admin to have said, “We are not an Island, we also rely on IBEDC…our cables are old, they don’t have the capacity to carry…it is what they give us that we distribute…” and I asked you to note that statement. Well, after being bamboozled and laughing to the jokes that were not funny, the students’ leaders ably led distinguished comrade, Aliyu Olateju Oladimeji, designated a committee to launch an inquiry into the power situation on campus. Though, many thought this is what should have happened before the March 5 protest, that is true, but we are not all perfect. I was in that committee.
We set out under another distinguished comrade, Arogundade Toheeb, the Speaker of the 5th Assembly. We went to Dugbe business unit of IBEDC and we met the Business Manager (Mrs. Adesoke)who informed us that Ojo and not Dugbe Business Unit is in charge of distributing electricity to the University of Ibadan. At this point, we thanked God, we thanked our stars, we thank the management for bamboozling us a day before because if not for that meeting, we would have proceeded with the protest planned for 7th of March to Dugbe and we would have been highly disappointed to find out on reaching there that the unit is in charge of that of University of Ibadan. We would have made a big fool of ourselves. We boarded our bus and proceeded to Ojoo.
When we got to Ojoo. We met the Business Manager, Mr. Falaye Joseph, of service number 11006813 and we accused them for not distributing power to the University community. The first statement Mr. Joseph uttered was, “I don’t like people that are not straightforward ” This, no doubt is a big slap on a University that prides itself not only as the premier University in Nigeria but also as a University that is worthy in character and sound judgment. If the town can now accuse the gown of insincerity, then I doubt if sincerity is still existing in this world. This accusation already gave us a summary and a peak into what the man has to say. From that moment, we confirmed our fears that our in loco parentis are deceptive and chronic liars.
Mr. Falaye, as a competent personality in his own field, spoke a lot of “big vocabs and jargons” specific to their field. He later explained to us in lay man terms and I will summarize it for you in more simpler terms. Mr. Joseph started by telling us how UI is one of their most treasured clients and how they put the University over other entities in their unit because according to him, it is better to sell to UI and get 1 million naira in cash than sell to 100 houses and run after them to get far less than that. He agreed that generally the power situation in the entire country is not so good. Despite this situation, he said, it is still not as bad as for UI not to get adequate power supply. To corroborate his statement, he brought out a document detailing power supply to UI from the 15th of February when we resumed till 6th of March, a day before that day. We were surprised that we even found 24 hours on 27th of February – 2nd of March and the average power supply of those days is 19 hours! We were dumbfounded, we were confused and we were angry at the same time. We then proceeded to ask why there has been power outage in spite of these “excess” power supply. He gave three reasons for the power outage: 1. Shedding, which in simple explanation is UI refusing to allow the electricity supply in their control room for any reason whatsoever. 2. Fault, this is when there are faults with the transmitting cables which was what happened when one of the cables was vandalised on the 29th of February and was later repaired on the 3rd of March, 2016. 3. Allocation, this is when the supply from the IBEDC is not enough but which according to information revealed earlier is not the case.
Of the three reasons given to us by Mr. Falaye, apart from allocation, we are left with shedding and fault. About the fault, apart from the vandalised cable which was later repaired, it is hard to think if faulty cables are what is responsible for the outage because the outage would have been 100%. About shedding on the other hand, you might want to ask why would UI shed? Well, it is simple, UI is saving money by saving energy. The more electricity consumed, the more money to be paid at the end of the month. At this juncture, we can only come to two conclusion: 1. The University Management led by Idowu Olayinka is intentionally saving energy and in turn saving money with the power outage. 2. There is someone/something fishy in the Maintenance Unit. In either case, the problem is still internal. The management are always quick to say that spend nothing less than 30 million naira (though we found out 27.8 million naira is the highest they’ve paid in recent times) every month as if we, students, are the only consumers. As a matter of fact, we found out that for the month of December and January, the electricity bill was 16 million and 18 million respectively, which is saying that students only consumes half of the total electricity. We know we are not the ones using ACs, fans and fridges in offices, are these people paying for electricity too? If Olayinka is complaining that the electricity is too much for him to pay, please remind him of two things: 1. It wasn’t like this during Adewole’s administration. We would recommend he goes for a couple of weeks orientation on power management from IFA himself. 2. There were 12 other candidates who were ready to do this job without complaining but he insisted on being the 12th Vice Chancellor. The truth is, if Olayinka wants to resign, there is still time for him to do so.
Of our greatest Students’ Union leaders, I want to use the medium to salute your courage and sacrifices. We, students, know you have done your best but as we all know, it’s not over until it is over. We are aware of your meeting with the Dean of Students and your fierce representation. We heard about the management’s suggesting a break for the students to rectify the various abnormalities in the system. While we are not dictating for you to accept or reject this proposition, we are appealing to the leadership of the Union to use wisdom and knowledgeable discretion in tackling this issue. This discretion we are appealing our leadership to use has more to do with decisiveness. Since the last protest, we have observed power situation on campus and the average is still below 10 hours per day. The question is “what are we doing?” Are we protesting? Are we going home? Are we renegotiating supply hours? What exactly are we doing? The truth is, the situation on campus has turned almost all of us to nocturnal animals, as our active hours are between 12 midnight to 3am, 4am or 6am as UI maintenance determines from time to time. We need to read, we need to cook, we need to work on our laptops, we need to iron our cloths and so on. And it is time we question the rationale behind the selfish/insensitive people that negotiated or proposed 12 midnight to 4am or 6am because of “heat”, the question is, “how many students can afford fans? How many students have fans in their rooms?”
Of our greatest Students’ Union leaders, if you want us to “manage and endure” the situation, please let us know, at least, we won’t have to waste our hopes on you.
I am Oredola Ibrahim Ajatontiriajabale, a frustrated student of a University that is a shadow of its former shadow.
