Hurricane Yemi’ Blows Ibadan Varsity Roofs Away, VC Summons Stakeholders Meeting
The Oasis Reporters
April 7, 2018
Will it be made ready before students resume?
Only money can say here.
Nigeria’s Vice president Yemi Osinbajo visited the University of Ibadan and while he was still paying courtesy calls on academics, rulers and politicians, the sky opened and the city, scattered on seven hills, had it’s first rainstorm called ‘Hurricane Yemi’.
The storm was so serious, it blew off the roofs of several buildings including the Students Union Building, Tedder Hall etc in the campus.
The University Vice Chancellor, Abel Idowu Olayinka, a professor of geology is as perplexed as any other leader would be in such a situation, but in this case, his utter frustration and confusion is massive as he tries to ponder on what new steps to take in ameliorating the situation.
The University is still reeling in the throes of a Non Academic Staff Union debilitating strike over earned allowances and how to share the payments the Buhari government is paying them in bits. Angrily, Mr. Olayinka outsourced the jobs the staffers do to contractors, meaning that the unionists could call off the strike, then find redundancies staring them in the face, and a possible retrenchment awaiting them as well when they resume.
In order to catch up with other younger and smarter universities who refused to join the University of Ibadan in the strike, Olayinka proclaimed a resumption for new students, billed for next week, April 15, 2018, three months after the University of Ilorin in central Nigeria resumed.
And to raise more money from students, he increased the hostel accommodation fee from 15,000 Naira (fifteen thousand naira) per bed space in a room for two to four students to 30,000 Naira (thirty thousand naira). Then the disaster of Hurricane Yemi strikes.
Less than eight days to resumption, Professor Olayinka has sent frantic text messages to parents and guardians of students stylishly tagged ‘stakeholders’ to assemble in Trenchard Hall for a crucial meeting. He intends to show them the blown off roofs and ask them to donate money for rebuilding them if their wards must stay comfortably in the University, said to be Nigeria’s premier university that started off as a campus of the University of London, nearly seventy years ago.
How far the parents or stakeholders are willing to donate money to the rebuilding fund yet remains to be seen, moreso as Olayinka just doubled the fees for hostel accommodation.
