UI as a metaphor of placing the cart before the horse

BY JAMILAH NASIR

Upon getting admission into a tertiary institution, one is advised to engage in at least one of these four activities; campus journalism, campus politics, business or learn a handiwork in addition to your curricular activities. This advice is to encourage students acquire certain skills during their “unpredictable” number of years in school, so that they are a little useful to the labour market or themselves upon graduation. This is, of course, is given the realities of the employment situation in the country.

For most of these activities, the skills gathered therein are first applied within the walls of the university- for practice aimed at expertise, and to better the lot of the immediate community. So, any undergraduate who heeds this advice, and births productivity, you should agree with me, deserves some accolades.

For ‘Kunle Adebajo, a student of the Faculty of Law in the University of Ibadan, campus journalism was the path to tread. It was his making, and instead of accolades, the university management wants to make it his doom.

A company, business organisation or school is who it is because of its human resources; and UI is not an exception. While the students may not have contributed to it being the first, their intellectuality, definitely, earned it its best position. The students are the means that produce the end glory of schools. Like Tijani Oluwamayowa, Fisayo Soyombo, Kunle Adebajo and many before him, earned UI its name.

Journalism, like literature, is first didactic before it is entertaining. As a student journalist who fully understands the role of his chosen co-curricular activity, Kunle Adebajo, piqued by the poor state of the restrooms in his hall of residence, wrote an article on Aril 20, 2016 where the budding journalist related how his alma mater placed the cart before the horse by prioritising “fashionable roofs” over “rotten interiors”.

Kunle wrote: “Here’s the catch. First and foremost, the happenstance is another arguable case of putting the cart before the horse. At the present time, two toilet facilities in Sultan Bello hall are under lock due to their utter state of disrepair. Another one is in fact soon to join them in retirement. The same story goes for other halls as well. In point of fact, I know of persons who trek a long distance to answer nature’s call just so they could steer clear of the waterloo in our flooded but waterless conveniences. But then the vast majority have resigned to fate, daily taking sips of death into their posterior cavity and hoping their antibodies are up to the task.”

Kunle would not be the first to draw the attention of the school management to the inhumane condition of the convenience system among many other faults in the entire school. From discussing it among themselves, to informing the porters and complaining to the hall wardens, the management would be telling an obvious lie if it says it is unaware. It has always known but chose to turn deaf ears to the yearnings of the students who made it what it is.

For writing, the student’s disciplinary committee has ruled that Kunle be rusticated for two semesters. Instead of going to law school, the institution seeks to take him backwards.

But Kunle says: “I do not have anything specifically against the University of Ibadan, because the same chain of events could as well have happened anywhere else. But I remain committed to the good of this country and every one of my countrymen. I remain committed, particularly, to helping improve her education sector. I remain committed to a future where our children do not have to choose between literacy and liberty, and one where our fathers will realise that the methods of the old are not the only―or even the best—there are.”

THE TOILETS THAT GOT KUNLE RUSTICATED ARE STILL IN RUINS

With UI, history is repeating itself as farce. I can but only imagine the number of meetings, time spent, planning and of course money put into the process of rusticating one student for telling the truth. These resources, this same management, would not channel into remediating the situation that has been brought to its attention.

Because two years later, the taps don’t run but the toilets are flooded, the water closets are broken, students queue to use the restrooms that send them to Jaja clinic to die! Two years later, the urine of Dorcas in room 37B still drips on my head when I am bathing in the tub beneath her floor. Two years later, I still use my flashlight by 1pm on a very sunny day because my room is a dungeon, and I am the first host of soldier ants when the rains come. Two years later 100 students still share 8 non-functioning toilets. Two years later, I have a test by 10am and I am queuing for water by 9:15am to have my bath. But the management would not seat to plan how to make life better for me, it only sits to have Kunle’s head.

Beyond misplaced priority and perhaps even more disturbing, is the aura of dictatorship that clouds the brain of the managers. In UI, the system is designed to make you fail and shut you up. You must not see, if you see, you must not speak. If you speak you become a Kunle, Mote…

Edmund Burke, an Anglo-Irish philosopher said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”. Kunle has done something for us and we must not watch him go down. So, I call on you to join me ask UI to #FreeKunleAdebajo

Jamilah Nasir is a reporter at TheCable and a creative writer