By: Emmanuel Utibe

The UI Students’ Representative Council failed to convene for its emergency meeting on Saturday 29th April, as earlier planned. Instead, they opted for a closed-door meeting.

Earlier in the week, the Council had sent out a notification for an emergency sitting to be held on Saturday, April 29th, of which the main agenda was looking into and approving the Union Week’s budget.

As of 11 am on Saturday, when the meeting was supposed to start, they were less than 5 names on the attendance logbook. And at 1 pm, just over 20 honourables had come for the sitting. Some of them who had gotten tired of waiting had signed out before the sitting even went into the proceeding.

An hour later, the chief whip came into the chambers to tell press members present and other observers to excuse them as it was only going to be a closed-door meeting.

Their meeting commenced around the hour of 2 pm with just about 30 members of the house. But it turned out to be a rowdy session.

At some minutes after 4 pm, the closed-door meeting was concluded and the few honorable present were seen leaving the SRC chambers.

A last look at the attendance showed that there were just over 30 reps who at one point or the order were present for the failed sitting that day.

Speaking to Mrs Speaker after the sitting, she noted that the house in the closed-door meeting had resolved to send the budget to the house’s finance and budget committee to handle which would then later be passed as a resolution of the house by at least Monday. She said that there was no need for there to be another sitting scheduled as the meeting had a “responsible amount of reps present”.