by Japheth J Omojuwa
Nigeria has recently gone to war in Mali, but Nigeria is currently under siege and, like Asa
sings, no one seems to be on the run. Perhaps it is because it is in
the most inauspicious places that wars are first won and lost. Recent
happenings at the University of Ibadan
have gone unnoticed by the generality of Nigerians because of the
collusion of the University authority with some mainstream media in
Nigeria. The University of Ibadan, under the leadership of Professor Isaac Adewole
will brook no dissent from the students for policies they perceive as
unfair to them, so the university has resorted to the first tactics of
all authoritarians,
voice-gagging, threats and intimidation of dissenters, and for good
measure, brown envelopes for reporters to tell only their side of the
story. The university is for the nurturing of minds, but, alas, the
administrators of the university would rather keep their bodies strong
and make the students lose their minds. Thank God for Sahara Reporters!
The banning of cooking in halls of residence in the University of Ibadan
may seem trivial to more pressing issues of national importance, as the
Vice-Chancellor said on the University Radio, students are not in the
University to eat. Hammering on the rights of students to cook in the
kitchenettes provided by the school authorities will be missing the
point and will be doing a disservice to the more important issues of the
violation of fundamental human rights.
For those who have missed the advertorials
in reports of newspapers like the Tribune, the Public Relations stunts
of a Parent Consultative Forum, and several interviews the
Vice-Chancellor, Professor Isaac Adewole, and his henchman, Professor A. Alada have given, these are their arguments: that the present administration cannot continue the legacy of the University of Ibadan
as a residential university because the cost of maintaining the halls
of residence cost the University a huge sum needed for some other
places.
So students, after rejecting the offer of paying 60,000 naira
per bed space, the prohibitive economic costs of staying in the halls,
were told not to cook in the new kitchenettes provided except for ‘light
cooking’ and to patronize the new Cafeteria system which would be
given to facility managers commissioned by the University. The students
are now essentially commissioned to eat where they’d rather not
patronize.
Every wise man and fool knows that new policies are often met with
resistance. So the Vice-Chancellor, taking a cue from President Goodluck
Jonathan as during the January 2012 Uprising has suppressed dissent
voices. Students are being issued letters alleging them of gross
misconduct, some have been asked to report to the police and are being
threatened with detention, and some are on the surveillance of the State
Security Service. One of the student leaders has been silenced by the
school authorities that there is a fear that he may be in the custody of
the University since he has not been seen in public since the
Vice-Chancellor openly asked him to keep mute and not speak on the
matter at the Town hall meeting held on the first day of resumption.
It seems that the Vice-Chancellor, in a bid to fulfill the vision of
the university as a world class institution for academic excellence is
sacrificing its mission as a dynamic custodian of society’s salutary
values. If not for anything, the University of Ibadan
should not only tolerate, but also welcome dissenting voices because it
is a university! Pray, if the suppression of constitutional liberties
can be tolerated in a university because of the unequal power relations
between the administrators and students, then anarchy looms for this
country in the horizon.
Already, the students who feel oppressed are resorting to self-help
because it seems to them that they cannot find justice since the
Vice-Chancellor has made his pronouncements ‘non-negotiable’. So the
students are starting to consider the pulling of the ears of the
Vice-Chancellor for attention. They have invited the National
Association of Nigerian Students (NANS)
with its unconventional tactics, and some terrorist organizations have
started reaching out to some of the students. As an alumnus of the
University who keeps in touch with the student groups, I recently
received a forwarded mail from some terrorist organization claiming to
want to fight the injustice in the University. Last year, the University
was shut down because of threats from the Boko Haram sect without any incident, the intransigence of the university now may just be the needed incentive for them to act.
A stitch in time may just save the University.
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