Dr Promise Adiele

Promise Adiele

I am passionate about the University of Lagos for many reasons. A university that provided the enabling platform for my first degree, master’s degree, and doctorate should legitimately stake a claim in moulding my intellectual and ethical worldview. The university gave me the first opportunity to lecure. I am a thoroughly bred native son of UNILAG. I met my best friends there. I met a mentor there who occupies a father figure in my life. I met my beautiful wife there too, the mother of my four disciples.

UNILAG first became my home in 1994 as a freshman. Eni-Njoku Hall was the first outpost. Department of English was the arena. Professors Eruvbetine, Ezeigbo, Eghagha, Aribisala, Maduagwu, Vincent, and Okoro are witnesses. Go and verify.
In those days of early beginnings, it was easy to locate and mingle with kindred spirits. We floated with like-minded fellows of the same ideological inclinations. Armed with lofty dreams and aspirations for the future, we pursued our dreams and aspirations with innocent vigour and determined intensity.

The university, in all its overwhelming, academic and social capacities, shaped our thinking to be the best. I don’t know about it now, but then, to be a UNILAG student carried a badge of dignity, a different kind of dignity which sometimes morphed into arrogance. For us, there were only two universities in Nigeria, UNILAG and the rest. It is, therefore, inevitable that issues about the university should concern me and provoke a reaction.

Gbajabiamila UNILAG hostel

Recently, the media reported that Femi Gbajabiamila, the erstwhile Speaker of the House of Representatives and current Chief-of-Staff to President Bola Tinubu donated an imposing hostel with 484 bed spaces that cost N1.5 billion. (Recall that the federal government has earmarked N60 billion to renovate the National Assembly Complex. Note the difference between building a new hostel and RENOVATING an existing old building. Nigeria, we hail thee). The new hostel in UNILAG is indeed a cheering, heartwarming news to any lover of progress, especially these days, when good news is in short supply around the country. For sure, there seems to be doom and gloom hovering the country’s economic, security and social boundaries made more grave by the unrelenting, systematic, disavowal of accountability, and good governance by the political class. The Gbajabiamila hostel donation to UNILAG couldn’t have come at a better time.

Given that students of the university have faced acute accommodation challenges recently, the new hostel is a huge relief to the entire university community. However, there are germane issues which deserve the attention of the public. Many students of the University of Lagos are not rejoicing over the Gbajabiamila hostel. The students are convinced that the hostel will not serve any good purpose to them for many reasons.

Femi Gbajabiamila

The students argue that it will unfortunately go the way of all good-intentioned projects which found their way into the hands of bad administrators. In a normal clime, the imposing new hostel would go a long way in reducing the accommodation problems of any university. That is why the hostel gift is fact on one level and fiction on another level. The fact is that Gbajabiamila has donated a massive hostel to the University of Lagos to ease accommodation challenges for the students. The fiction is that the new hostel is way beyond the reach of the students. It is not available for the ordinary student.

Presently, there are about thirteen hostels at the University of Lagos. The Students’ Affairs Division has the responsibility of ensuring that these hostels are allocated to the students. Unfortunately, most of the hostels are empty as the students grapple with the sad reality of having to commute from far places to attend their lectures. Why are the hostels empty while the students suffer to attend lectures from town? Initially, at least when I was in UNILAG, accommodation was automatic for first-year and final-year students, while year two and year three students tried their luck in the mysterious ballot system. For inexplicable reasons, the Students’ Affairs Division stopped allocating bed spaces to first-year and final-year students. Now, everyone goes through the ballot system which is shrouded in impenetrable obscurity. Those who get bed spaces through the ballot system sell at exorbitant prices so that a bed space in UNILAG sells between N100,000 to N150,000 per session.The Students’ Affairs Division cannot be exonerated from the malaise of accommodation balloting in the university.

The question is, why are the hostels empty while students suffer to attend lectures from town? Why is the accommodation balloting internet site never open? Some people believe that there is an advanced degree of racketeering going on at the Students’ Affairs Division of the university which is why the hostels are empty and students suffer to attend lectures from town.

The Gbajabiamila’s hostel gift to the university on the surface is a good gesture. But it could be a mirage, a pipe dream for many students to have access to the hostel. One wonders if the hostel gift is totally free or it is an investment which would yield returns. Some students in the university confirmed that a bed space in the new hostel costs between N300,000 to N500,000 naira. If this report from the students is true, it then means that this is an investment by Gbajabiamila and not a gift to the university.

However, if Gbajabiamila gave the hostel to the school for free and a bed space there costs so much, it means that some officials of the university are irredeemably immersed in fraud and dubiety in the allocation of the bed spaces. How many students can afford that crazy amount of money to have access to the hostel? Or is it an unofficial cost by racketeers? Is the university management aware of the high cost of the new hostel?

What template is the university using to allocate the hostel to students? These are important questions the public should ask. It is one thing to donate a hostel to a university but another thing for the students to have access to the facility.

Some people have raised the issue of how Gbajabiamila got the money to build the massive hostel. Did he use his money? If he used his money, how did he make the money? Other people have also argued that the new hostel could be part of his constituency project. If the latter is the case, should a constituency project bear the name of the honourable member sponsoring it?

That the hostel bears Gbajabiamila’s name is a pointer that it is his project and an investment. The University of Lagos must immediately make public the agreement between the institution and Gbajabiamila. What exactly is the true position? It is fine for an investor to build a massive hostel for a university, and hand it over to the school to use for a fixed term before returning it to the owner to recoup money on investment. Is that the case in the Gbajabiamila/UNILAG hostel donation? What is fact in the whole matter and what is fiction? The public deserves to know.

If the hostel is a gift to the university, then the institution should make it available to the students at an affordable cost and it should bear the name of the donor. If it is a constituency project, then it should not bear his name. The Students’ Affairs Division should immediately make the process of allocating the hostel transparent without giving room for the public to suspect that there is a racket in the entire process. The university cannot have such a massive edifice as a hostel while the students are going through the crucible to attend lectures from town for lack of accommodation.
Also, if the Students’ Affairs Division has become a haven for corruption and accommodation racketeering, the Vice Chancellor and university senate should immediately reorganize the place and change the entire structure. A university should not become a microcosm of the larger society where public service is irredeemably immersed in the cesspool of corruption. There is no justification for students to be attending lectures from home while hostels on campus are empty.

Also, there is no ethical justification for first-year and final-year students to be made to go through the rigour of balloting for accommodation. Upon admission, young and new students should be allocated accommodation immediately. In the same vein, final-year students should be given accommodation automatically so that they can settle down and write their projects.

Lack of accommodation can affect the academic output of many students. For example, a student that lives in Festac, Ikorodu or even Sango and has an 8 o’clock lecture will leave the house by 5 am. After spending about three hours on the road, what level of concentration during lectures will guarantee proper assimilation for the student? University of Lagos students need accommodation immediately. If Gbajabiamila donated the hostel to the school for free, then let the students have the bed spaces at an affordable, reduced price. The Students’ Affairs Division of the university should wake up to their responsibilities. Allocation of bed spaces on campus should not be a casino. Parents are crying, students are crying too. UNILAG Vice Chancellor and the Senate, over to you.

*Promise Adiele PhD
Mountain Top University
[email protected]
X@drpee4