“In addition to the checklist of home-grown challenges students face at the University of Ibadan is the questionable matter of accomodation.” 

As part of a canon, it is quite expected that a student’s University experience is considerably complete, and rightly so, when basic exigencies are in place. Learning, and to be thoroughly imbibed into the University community, its academic, extracurricular and core social spheres, like Maslow’s proposition of shelter, becomes an essential need.

Housing or accomodation for University of Ibadan students plays a pointing role about the University status as an institution. It points unwaveringly at the quality of education that students are conditioned. The living condition of students at every point in reference is a deployable yardstick to measure the standard or quality of education that students receive. Globally, the right to an adequate standard of living or housing is enshrined and recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. According to a Dataphyte 2023 report, Nigeria has an estimated 28 million housing deficit, establishing the hallmark of the concern in discourse, as nothing but a stark reality.

That the University of Ibadan is situated in Nigeria, accomodation deficit challenges as severally reported here, among many others, must be considered real than it is apparent. These dawning concerns unfortunately stand at variance with the policy of the University on living arrangements, envisioned ‘to provide an environment that will assist each student in developing his or her academic and social potentials to the fullest’. It is unfortunate on the basis of insufficiency of halls and its inadequacies.

The University of Ibadan has twelve public halls of residence. Each is famous and for its share of uniqueness. As clearly stated in the 2008/2009 Students Information Handbook, the twelve halls have a total optimum capacity of nearly 8,000. They were built with a withholding capacity which each should moderately hold. Mellanby Hall, 414 capacity; Tedder Hall, 390 capacity; Kuti Hall, 520 capacity; Sultan Bello, 406 capacity; Queen Elizabeth II Hall, 550 capacity; Alexander Brown Hall, 744 students; Independence Hall, 978 capacity; Nnamdi Azikiwe Hall, 999 capacity; Idia Hall, 1,158 capacity; with others having its benchmarks.

Today, halls of residence are deluged with certain predicaments that are hardly investigated or popularly discussed. These deficits are in such certain terms like inadequacies, infestation, disparity, overbearing lordship over the student leadership in the hall, and even undiscriminating fines.

Inadequacies – Hall Facilities Begging For Help

Hostel facilities and its conditions are important to making of students in the University community. From the hall entrance to each student room, the need for recreational facilities, institutional facilities, and residential facilities cannot be discussed out of proportion.

It is not uncommon to see halls of residence, especially the male ones, with football pitches and table tennis used for sporting activities, and the female halls rarely resorting to morning exercises. The presence of sports facilities for instance appeal to students who would not be chanced or may not be interested in extremely outdoor sports beyond the perimeters of the halls. For being time-effective, cost-effective and remote, hall facilities help bring residents to their homes.

The uneven distribution of facilities like light bulbs in hallways and other common areas are a dire concern. The faulty state of many bulbs in halls such as Sultan Bello Hall, Nnamdi Azikiwe Hall, Great Independence Hall, Queen Idia Hall, among others, as in the case of damaged electric sockets in rooms are appalling. Often, the scheme to renovate halls ends at changing nets or painting the walls, are not critical enough. Restroom facilities in halls, unkindly horrible in some places than the other, demands obvious reparation. Toilets bowl without a lid or cover can pose as much danger as a physically messed up site, which the toilets are; an image crisis.

Also, washroom hygiene in halls or among residents is a shadow, without running water bringing easy access across hall floors and blocks. Halls of residence sanitary system that is basically underfunded, neglected or poorly managed needs revamp. The overabundance of water which geographically characterizes the planet becomes an irony in the event of our halls lacking water.

Students struggle within the hall is seen in situations that have forced residents to go to far flung places to fetch water or charge their devices. This distress which is long due for a change continues to be a worrying concern. Such that barely has been genuinely or exhaustively addressed.

On Infestation – Where Shall Our Help Come From?

Bedbugs are on-campus resident nightmare. The daring, ever conscious insects in the halls are creatures with the tendency to send legal occupants unwarranted out, perpetually disrupting comfort. The sessional combat against bedbugs or simply fumigation initiated by the University authority has sparsely helped the situation.

Mosquitoes, rats and cockroaches are guilty part of the invaders. The no-thorough waterways in some halls of residence compound the height of this tale of accomodation deficit. Weekends across the University hallways in student residential places are defacing scenes and celebratory or inviting moments for there unwanted parasites. With littered floors and overfilled waste bins here and there, resulting from the absence of sanitary cleaners, a deplorable image of the halls is made. Adequate employment of sanitary cleaners, as against the current uninsured, outsourcing system, is a better option that the University should rather employ.

Discriminatory Prices – To Be Fresh Is To Be A Sinner

The latest accommodation price structure at the University of Ibadan has prompted hushed debate and unspoken anger within the students community. Last academic session, the University increased the lodging fees from ₦30,000 to ₦45,000 for stalites (returning students) and ₦60,000 for fresh students, without explanation. On the surface, this may appear to be a minor issue, but closer it is not. The most obvious issue is the lack of any significant variation in the rooms assigned to both groups of students, which raises concern about the validity for this differential charges.

In many halls of residence, the blocks given to fresh students are in worse shape than those assigned to stalites and finalists. The Obafemi Awolowo Hall of Residence exhibits this dilemma. Freshers are assigned Blocks F, D, and E, which are known for their frequently blocked toilets and waterlogged restrooms. These blocks are riddled with maintenance difficulties that render them nearly uninhabitable. The restroom on the second to the last floor of Block D is a classic example; inhabitants have ceased using it totally owing to the chronic waterlogging that happens after any type of use, resulting in a perpetually unpleasant odor.

Given these circumstances, the discriminatory costs for the same value is unjustifiable and unwarranted. Fresh students who are new to the academic atmosphere and are already dealing with multiple adjustments, are charged additional tuition despite inadequate living circumstances. This dissimilarity in prices have not translated yet into the best of facilities in the halls of residence.

Cost disparity and bad living circumstances point to a larger systemic issue within the University administration. The need for greater upkeep and equitable treatment of all classes of students should be prioritized. Instead, the current strategy appears to take advantage of new students, who are less inclined to dispute the system since they are unfamiliar with University procedures.

Political Crisis – Heads Without Caps

The Students’ Handbook and constitutions of almost all undergraduate halls of residence include provisions for democratic governance frameworks and student autonomy. However, this may easily be argued to be only on paper. Hall democracy should give avenues for the existence of the congress, the Hall Representative Council (legislative arm), the Executive Council, and desirably the Judicial Council, among others.

These structures are intended to provide the ability to make independent decisions, instilling a sense of responsibility and leadership. In spite of all these appreciable importance, recent events have shown a disturbing deterioration of this autonomy, owing to the intrusive meddling of hall management in the student polity. Cases which are only known in hushed communities where they exist, because of the ”University’s open arms and ears”.

Hall wardens officially are responsible for oversight and support. Wardens should not meddle in students’ election activity, undermining the authority of independent electoral bodies. This unsolicited intervention jeopardizes the integrity of elections while also discouraging student participation in governance, and undermining trust in the democratic process.

The overreach of hall wardens, if it exists, not only stifles student leadership, but also violates the very values of democratic governance that the institution purports to support. The autonomy of hall residents is critical to their growth as responsible and purposeful persons.

Issues With Fines And Student Extortion

Another major problem is the issue of student fines and extortion. Fines, which are intended to deter rule-breaking and maintain order, are frequently overused and excessively applied. This punitive approach, in which collective punishment is meted out for individual misdeeds, calls into question the fairness and justice of the University disciplinary system.

One of the most obvious concerns is the habit of penalizing an entire floor for misbehavior of an individual. In a room with four inmates, if one person defaults, punishment should not be extended to everyone else. While some may argue that this prevents others from tolerating or facilitating rule violations, the reality is that it breeds animosity and constitute injustice. The issue becomes considerably worse when entire blocks or floors are punished for the behavior of a single person. This is typical in a case, where all students in a block or floor are levied fines because an unknown individual hurled trash or feces over the balcony.

The phrase “when one finger is stained with oil, the others become stained” is sometimes used to justify collective punishment. However, this concept is fundamentally faulty in terms of fair punishment standards. Collective punishment contradicts the fundamental concept of social justice.

The rationale for collective punishment is likely to enhance peer control, with the intention that students will monitor and correct one or another’s behaviour. However, this approach ignores the intricacies of group dynamics and individual agency. Students, especially in a diverse setting like a University, come from a variety of background and wield varying degrees of influence among each other.