MY ‘TACTICAL’ SUSPENSION
Last week Friday (September 16, 2016), I was dehumanized, demoralized and humiliated by the collection of the Acting Vice Chancellor (Prof. Elujoba), Registrar (Dr. Awoyemi), Chairman of Committee of Deans (), Chairman of the University Security Committee () and the Acting Dean of the Division of Students’ Affairs (Dr. Mrs. Akinola), over the challenges presented to them by my role as a student political activist at the Obafemi Awolowo University campus. Meanwhile, let it be stated that I have been a parliamentarian in the Students’ Union and the Secretary of the school’s branch of the Education Rights Campaign (a non-profit political organization) since 2014, and as such have always been saddled with the task of intellectually and radically engaging the university management on the needs and demands of Students of the school in the interest of ensuring a sane society.
INVOLVEMENT IN THE RECENT STRUGGLES OF STUDENTS
With the experience of the rejection of the 330% fee increment carried out by the university management in 2014, students of the school deemed it fit last year to compel our union leaders (esp. executives) to take up the university management proactively on the poor welfare conditions that students were being subjected to, a condition which was the excuse for the increment in the first place. It was this, amongst other demands, which led to my participation in a press conference held by student activists at the correspondence centre in Osogbo on November 17, 2015, to mark the international students’ day. It was on this day that some three student union leaders were accused by the management of the University for allegedly beating up a Professor in the university, these leaders were later brought before a panel and summarily suspended by the university management of which they were later reinstated. Meanwhile, this victimization alongside a pronouncement of proscription rendered the genuine struggle of students for better welfare, frustrated.
In an attempt to ensure that all is not lost, some student activists thought it reasonable to continue carrying on the campaign resolved on by the congress of students, esp. the campaign for the probe of the then Vice-Chancellor. It was during this campaign that my e-portal page was closed with a response that I have committed an offence, and I thought it was just a technical glitch. It was in February 2016 that I later got a query over a post on my Facebook page, and I replied that my page was not in my control at the time and i reported it severally whenever I got control that the page was being hacked by some mischief-makers. My reply was not responded to then, neither was I invited to any investigative panel as stipulated by the constitution and the University Act.
As frustrating as the act was, I continued with my cause and was at the forefront of the students’ coalition that united with the recent struggle of workers in the university to demand for their wages, the probe of the outgoing Vice-Chancellor and the removal of his replacement – his image. It was this unity that compelled the Federal Government to dissolve that new administration and approved an Acting leadership for the school. This Acting leadership was later selected by the academics in the University Senate, whose union opposed the struggle for that victory, and Prof. Anthony Elujoba was produced from that Senate election, and this was approved by the Visitor of the University with the mandate of ensuring peace and stability on the campus.
THE NEGOTIATIONS
Out of the hope that the newly installed administration would favour the interests of the students and workers who ensured its existence in the first place, I approached the Registrar of the school (also the Registrar of the ousted administration), based on an official directive by the office of the Dean of the Division of Students’ Affairs, and presented my case. While he scolded me for my views online about the university management, he promised to look into the issue, and this was at a period when other students were registering their courses for the new session and already attending classes for those courses.
On August 16, the Office of the new Acting Dean of the Division of Students’ Affairs called a meeting with some students on the state of the students’ union at the Faculty of Administration Board room and I was invited to represent an organization that I was a member of, the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM). It was in this meeting that the Dean of Students’ Affairs said I was on “tactical suspension” and that she will ensure that my e-portal page is opened and I am allowed to continue exercising my rights as a student.
After waiting for a while till the period when normal registration was about to close, I went back to the Dean and she stated that the Acting Vice-Chancellor would like to meet me on this issue. I immediately went to fix an appointment to meet the Vice-Chancellor, who on meeting me commented that he was the Chairman Committee of Deans to Prof. Wale Omole when he was the Vice-Chancellor, and that Wale Omole (whose surname I shared) was a respectable person, and I am not. This immediately introduced the trend that the Acting Vice-Chancellor represented to me, and I hoped within me that the school will not be dragged backed to that backward era of Wale Omole, where student leaders were massively suspended, rusticated, detained and massacred by the university management. Based on this introduction, I was not surprised that Prof. Elujoba threatened me throughout the meeting for my active roles in pro-student movements and falsely accused me for being behind the disruption of peace on campus. The meeting ended with a request that he would like to see a member of my family so that they can discuss about my ‘redemption’.
On Friday, September 17, 2016, I brought my Uncle to the Office of the Vice Chancellor based on the request of the earlier meeting. I got to the meeting to meet the Vice-Chancellor in the company of the Dean of the DSA, the Chairman Committee of Deans, the Registrar and the Chairman of the University Security Committee. To begin my submission at the meeting, I was ordered to go through a round of unnecessary prostrations to the Grandfathers present to show my respect, and I did it respectfully, as humiliating and dehumanizing as it felt. It was during the course of this meeting that the Chairman of the Committee of Deans and the Chairman of the University Security Committee emphatically accused me of being mentally unstable, an utter abuse of power to my derogation. The Chairman of the University Security Committee added that I will be thrown in More (a police station in Ife, probably to be tortured) for a day, and I will come back to tell them what they want to hear. In fact, they laid the condition that my e-portal page will be opened based on:
My compulsory admittance to the fact that I committed all the offences trumped up against me.
A family meeting must be convened to chastise me and a report given back to the VC by the family representative.
A mental check-up at the Health Centre to be sure I’m mentally stable.
An undertaking to not involve in the activities they don’t approve and an apology must be signed by me.
I must go through a period of counseling by the representative of the management.
And then they will think about opening my e-portal page.
I immediately declined on the first condition, because it would be illegal, immoral, unreligious and insane of me to lie against myself. On my insistence on this position, these representatives of the university management stood up and ended the meeting
THE ILLEGALITIES AND THEIR INTENTIONS
Firstly, according to Section 36, Sub-section 1 of the Country’s constitution, we have to be informed of the right to fair hearing that ‘In determination of his civil rights and obligations, including any question or determination by or against any government or authority, a person shall be entitled to fair hearing within a reasonable time by a court or other tribunal established by law and constituted in such manner as to secure its independence and impartiality’. The university management has disregarded this part of the law, alongside the part of the University act that demands that an investigative panel be set up in cases of disciplinary actions. Additions of coercion, issuance of threats, and infringement on freedom of expression, can be traceable as other crimes committed by the management in this case.
It should also be stated that the major intention behind the insistence of the management on my admittance to their trumped-up charges, is to cover-up for their inability to issue a formal suspension letter, but had to revert to autocratic shutdown of my e-portal page. Meanwhile, this scheme is not only aimed at silencing me politically, because of the challenge the ideology I represent poses to the university management, but also aimed at turning me into a puppet who will be made to use his intellectual capacity to frustrate genuine student struggles in return for monetary gains, selfish ambitions and individualistic opportunities from the university management.
WHAT CAN BE DONE?
Following the falling apart of the meetings behind closed courts of the management, the only option left are meetings in the courts of public opinion and the meetings in the courts of law. Students’ rights to independent thinking and free expression will continue to be infringed on by autocratic, exploitative, self-seeking, and unfatherly university managements until student starts organizing themselves democratically, radically, intellectually and independently. We must not wait for anyone’s approval before we exercise our rights to freedom of association. The Great Ife Students’ Union is still struck with an inability to carry out the struggle to demand for better living and learning welfare conditions, and the demand for the reinstatement of Olawale Owolabi .aka. Ogunruku. This is not the time for any union politician to use these struggles for their selfish electoral interests to be gained, but a time to take the opportunity to change this spree of student victimizations, not in OAU alone but in UNILAG, AAUA, etc, without allowing ourselves to be distracted into relinquishing our other indispensable demands and needs as students.
With this narration, it becomes obvious that the Prof. Anthony Elujoba is just a continuation of the despotic Prof. ‘Tale Omole Administration despite the revolutionary premises for the enthronement of that regime. In fact, the new regime is boldly flaunting all the rejected policies of the last administration. Students and workers must continue the struggle to ensure sane leadership of the school, until it is achieved. We must not be discouraged. ALUTA CONTINUA, VICTORIA ASCERTA.
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(Omole Ibukun- Hon. IBK would currently be a 500level student of the Department of Civil Engineering of the Obafemi Awolowo University if not for the ‘tactical’ suspension imposed by the university management. He is the Secretary of the Education Rights Campaign in Obafemi Awolowo University, and a two-time parliamentarian in the Students’ Union)
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