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OAU Crisis: The Distortions Of The Registrar By Raheem Kolawole
I read with shame and dissatisfaction the advertorial of the Obafemi Awolowo University management published in punch newspaper of Monday 11th march this year. The said statement does not only represent nothing but concocted falsehood and a falsehood not corrected is capable of becoming the truth in the mind of unsuspecting public especially parents and guardians. As a student of Obafemi Awolowo University, (OAU), Ile-Ife, I wish to say that it is rather unfortunate that a university administration who cannot release fund to improve the living and studying conditions of students including the identity cards which is one of the demands of students, can commit about #6000000 to publish falsehood just to get public sympathy. What a shame!
The OAU management in the said statement narrowed the whole issue down to the personality of Akinola Saburi (the president of the students’ union) and deviated from the real matter which is its blunt refusal to grant the students the one week mandatory lecture free which has been provided for in the university regulation. One expected a responsible university management to obey its own rules and regulations.
As far as I am concern, I see the advertorial as an open confession of its reasons for the recent crisis. They claimed that Akinola Saburi disrupted the sitting of the Federal Government visitation panel to the school. For some of us who were at the panel sitting, the students’ union through its P.R.O (Tunde Dairo) presented the union position on all the terms of reference of the panel on the request of the chairman of the panel, Prof. Mustapha. Suffice to say is the fact that the presence of the students’ union at the sitting was at the invitation of the dean of student affairs through a written memo three days before the Visitation Panel sitting. From my own point of view, may be the union had sinned against the VC by calling for proper funding of education; and further exposing the management’s wrong methods of administration.
However, the entire blame of the crisis should be put at the door step of Prof Michael Oladimeji Faborode-led administration. Rather than looking into the students demands, the Vice Chancellor resorted to undemocratic act of mobile police invitation of campus. Aside closing down the school, the VC announced the undemocratic proscription of the students’ union and as if that is not enough, he brought in mobile police to chase away traders at the popular Sport Market which eventually led to the inferno that engulfed the market where goods worth millions of naira were destroyed. It is pathetic and highly hypocritical that the management deliberately ignored this particular fact in the advertorial which purportedly wanted “to state the facts as they were”.
Conclusively, I call for adequate compensation by the management for the victims of the fire incident and equally on well-meaning Nigerians and progressive individuals to as a matter of necessity prevail on OAU authorities to reopen the campus because students had done nothing to warrant the indefinite closure. We are also hearing the rumour that the management is already inviting some students to disciplinary panel when they have already been sent home ungraciously. This is the highest form of misrule in a civilian era.
OLAGUNJU TAIWO 162 Ipaja Road, Agege Lagos
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