I wail: The Beginning of the End

My attention was drawn today to the fact that OAU admitted 7,500 students. Last session it was 6,400 students. It appears the quota is increasing yearly and not proportional to infrastructural development.

I ask myself the rhetorical question of; Where do they intend to put those coming in? 7,500 freshmen added to 5,500 finalists... Where do they fit in when we have only 9,000 bedspaces? Do these people realise that there is no space? Is it when Awo smells like cow dung and Faj smells like pig piss? Is it when San Siro has become a "shotput" field? Is it when the back of Angola Block D and F have become haven for manure-in-nylon?

The accommodation facilities are horrible enough already. Angola is hell, Mozambique is a concentration camp. Are we to suffocate ourselves to death? Why don't they reduce the quota?

Admit 3,000 strictly by cut-off and let the rest go and learn handiwork, try other institutions that still have space or keep trying.

University education is important but not compulsory. Those graduating from Universities are not even getting employed.

Sometimes, I just get overwhelmed by the situation. It is disheartening. Totally disheartening.

12 in a room meant for 4, 6 in a room meant for 2. If you don't want it, go and rent a house in town. You get to town and they start robbing you and stealing your valuables. Late in the night, some boys come around and keep firing in the air till you open your doors and offer them the sacrifices of your iPads and laptops just so they don't take your life.

Nigeria does not have a future if this continues. Nigeria does not. Nigeria cannot.

Right from childhood, I used to say if offered a chance to leave this country. I wouldn't leave, because I still had the strong belief things could change. But, being realistic, the hope is dim. Very dim. Can anything good come out of this Nazareth?

Go to school. Go to school. Go to school.

The conditions are not favourable for studying. The hostels are horrible. The laboratory is not well equipped. Lecture theatre has very bad chairs. You cannot hear lecture because the hall does not have a public address system, you contributed money in the class to get one, and after 3 classes the battery is gone.

The annoying thing is not even the conditions, but the godforsaken apologists of which some of them are reading this. They say "why not go to class early and make front seat?" "Why not pour dettol in the water before using?" "Why not get a recorder and put it in front?"... It all boils down to the selfish ideology of always looking out for self, rather than community. If I make front seat in a course offered by 1,500. I should forget the rest? If I can buy dettol, I should ignore the child who can't buy groundnuts not to talk of sanitizing water? Apologies and individual solutions are merely palliative.

You make a First class... They tell you there is no more automatic employment. They tell you education is not for the poor but for only those who can afford it. You have paid close to 90k in Part 1 and like 26k or so for part 2 and other levels in the same range. Still no improvement in welfare condition. Government allocates little money, management further allocates little money with little consultation with students.

I may end up slapping any idiot who says the nonsense of "you can make it" or "you can also do it" or "Dada had 5.0 in UNILAG".

I make bold to assert, that anyone who gained admission to OAU is a genius and among the very best minds from secondary school. The cutoff is the highest in Nigeria and the admission process is the toughest (if we choose to ignore the minute percentage that come in through dubiety).

If there were better conditions on ground. We would have more First class graduates and better intellectual material from this institution.

The advertisement placed in Punch for application for the post of the VC. The part where they listed achievements of the institution, it would have been better if they did not put it at all. They listed the design of a "crop processing machine" as the number 1 achievement of the institution and the study of sickle cell anemia or something like that.

Just imagine! 21st century!!!! That's all Great Ife has achieved.

You finish from Engineering, you go into marketing. Kini correlation When you know that you just read to pass in school, you cannot practise what you learnt. I know a lot of them like that, simple machine design, they have forgotten.

Let me stop for now.... Some other time, this Jeremiah will lament again.

Koye-Ladele Mofehintoluwa
Obafemi Awolowo University
10th of February, 2016