Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, which is owned by the Federal
government is one of the first generation universities in Nigeria and
it prides itself as the leader among other universities in the country.
Daniel Afolabi; an alumni of the university often claim that OAU is the most
beautiful campus in Africa.
Founded in 1961 as the University of Ife by
the regional government of Western Nigeria and renamed Obafemi Awolowo
University on 12 of May 1987, in honour of the first premier of the
Western Region of Nigeria, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, OAU is ranked as the
most productive university in Nigeria by the National Universities
Commission (NUC).
The campus has an eye-catching landscape built on
about 5,000 acres out of a total of 13,000 acres of land belonging to
the university. Unfortunately, some of the facilities that once
portrayed OAU as a beautiful campus, especially the students’ halls of
residence, are decomposing and the rot bedeviling the university is now
enormous. The beauty of the OAU students’ halls of residences has given
way to decay due to neglect.
There are eight (8) halls of residence
including Fajuyi, Awolowo, Angola and E.T.F for male students, while
Moremi, Akintola, Alumni and Mozambique halls of residence are for
female students. Signs of wear and tear were very visible on the long
stretch of buildings when Daily Trust visited.
The living condition
of the students in these halls of residence is pathetic. At the Awolowo
Hall, our correspondent observed that the toilets were in bad state in
most of the blocks. In one of the toilets, the closet had broken and the
bathrooms reeked of fermented urine. The students lamented that the
university authority was not carrying out renovation on the hostels. The
motto of the university is, “For learning and culture” but owing to the
bad condition of their hostels, the students have parodied this motto
to “For learning and suffering.”
Mr Oladapo Rasheed, a 200 level
student of the Linguistics department is the General Secretary of
Awolowo Hall of residence. He told Daily Trust that bedbugs have
colonised the hostel “Our mattresses are full of bedbugs owing to
non-fumigation. We brought our mattresses from our respective homes, but
over the time, the bedbug penetrated the mattresses because the
environment is dirty. I once watched the movie titled prison break and
the prison that I saw in that movie is better than our hostels in Ife.”
A
400 level student of Psychology, Mr Amos Ajileye said he has spent 4
years on the campus, and that he has never witnessed renovation of the
hostels since he was admitted to OAU “I have spent 4 years in this
university and I have never seen any renovation on our hostels, except
the cleaners that usually come to sweep the floor and they don’t come
during weekends. This is too bad and we want the authority to renovate
the hostels,” he said.
Another 300 level student of Religious Studies, Mr Ifedapo Akinola also lamented the rot in the infrastructural facilities.
According
to him, “There is serious infrastructural decay in our hostels. The
condition of our toilets and the tank where we are fetching water is too
bad. A section of the hostel collapsed recently, and that is the place
where we wash and bath. No one was there when it collapsed. It would
have killed some of us if any of us had been present . Should the
management wait until we are killed before they would repair our hostel?
It is better they do the repairs now.”
Mr Nwanegwo Uzor Amaka, a
400 level Civil Engineering student, also said their hostels could be
mistaken for prison yards. Nwanegwo said “Prisoners are better than the
condition here. I stay in block 5.We have no toilet and more than 10
students stay in a room meant for two students. We have 10 rooms on the
block making 100 students in that block. Yet, there is no toilet for us.
We bath outside because the condition of our bathroom is very bad.”
At
the female hostel, the situation was similar to that of the male
students hostels, in terms of infrastructural decay, but the environment
was not too dirty. The female students were taking care of the
surroundings of their hostels, unlike their male counterparts who relied
solely on the cleaners to help them sweep the surrounding.
At
Mozambique Hall, a 200 level student of Public Administration, Miss
Adetayo Adetorera Anna is the hall chairperson ,and she was not happy
about the living conditions in the hostels. She said, “The condition of
our hostels is not pleasant. Our hostels are overcrowded. Take for
instance, 24 students share one toilet. We fight to get water. We are
battling with bedbugs. In fact, it was our hall warden that helped us to
fumigate one of the rooms recently, when the issue of bedbugs became
unbearable, and we had to go and report to the hall management.”
At
Moremi Hall of residence, Miss Babanumi Oluwadamilola, a 300 level Law
student also expressed worry over the living condition in their hostels.
She was particular about the issue of toilets and urged the authority
of the university to act on time and fix the infrastructures at the
hostels. “Our toilets are in very bad shape and as a matter of fact, the
hostels need repair. We are suffering seriously. We are not enjoying
electricity and other facilities and it should not be so. Actually, the
cleaners are trying, but there is a little they can clean on the rotten
facilities,” Oluwadamilola said.
A 500 level Chemical Engineering
student, Mr. Omotayo Akande is the President of OAU Student Union and
he is not oblivious of the horrible living condition in the hostels.
Akande is not relenting in the struggle for the welfare of the students.
Speaking with Daily Trust, the Student Union President said that there
is need to renovate the hostels and guard against overcrowding.
His
words, “You can see the level of decay in our overpopulated hostels on
the campus, that is supposedly the most beautiful campus in Africa.
Under normal circumstances , a room is supposed to be occupied by the
number of wardrobes you find there, and there are 2 wardrobes in most of
the rooms. However, the rooms are allocated to 6 students officially,
while squatters would also join the legal occupants.
Students are
complaining of bedbugs. There are no good toilets and we are subjected
to a condition that is not favourable to learning. In fact, we are
afraid of an outbreak of diseases on this campus.”
“We have met
the university authority and pleaded with them to take our welfare
serious, but they haven’t done anything. I have spent five years on this
campus and they have never renovated any of the hostels since I came to
OAU. Imagine, OAU hostels cannot boast of stable power supply and
potable water, yet, they said ours is the most beautiful campus in
Africa. As student Union leaders, the students are harassing us, blaming
us for not confronting the management over this issue, but we are
helpless since the university authority turned deaf ears to our cries,”
Akande lamented.
Reacting to the development, the Public Relation
Officer of the university, Mr Abiodun Olanrewaju faulted the students’
claims as he blamed them for abusing the facilities in their hostels. He
said the students overcrowded the hostels and overstretched the
facilities.
“Everything that the students told you is not true. They
caused the problem for themselves by overcrowding the hostels more than
the capacity of the facilities in those buildings. In a situation where
the university authority allocates a room for only four students, we
will eventually realise that 12 students are living in that room and
that puts unnecessary pressure on the facilities. They usually
accommodate squatters in the rooms ,and it would be difficult for the
university authority to chase out the squatters when the occupants of
the rooms are not complaining. The students should stop blaming the
university authority for the problem they caused themselves. On the
issue of renovation, I can assure you that the university authority
usually renovates the hostels during long vacations, and the students
will meet the hostels neat.But they would dirty it within a few weeks of
resumption. You know the students, if we allocate dirty hostels to
them, they would protest. So, the hostels are usually neat at the
beginning of the session but our students are in the habit of misusing
the facilities in the hostels,” Olanrewaju said.
