By: Abdulrasheed Olokoto

The University of Ibadan Students’ Union Executive Committee, led by Odedele Covenant, tendered a public apology to the student community following issues that arose during the Union’s Week Dinner held on Sunday, October 19, 2025, at the University of Ibadan International Conference Centre.

According to a memorandum obtained by IndyPress, the Union explained the reasons behind the event not unfolding as expected.

The Union  further addressed controversies surrounding the  final results of the pageantry contest, clarifying the criteria used in determining the winners.

“In our responsibility as a Union to ensure transparency and accountability to the students we lead, we deem it pertinent to provide clarity on occurrences that might have caused inconvenience at the grand finale of our week. While as of a day before the dinner, barely 100 students had bought the tickets to the dinner, we had provisions for 850 in total,” the Union wrote.

“However, we had a turn out of students. Since it was nearly impossible to turn down students’ requests to attend the dinner at the point the dinner had started, we accommodated all students with open hands and hoped to make more provisions that could cater for all students, which eventually came, however late.”

“Moving forward, we find it necessary to tender this public apology to all students that paid the ticket fee but didn’t receive the full worth of what they paid for by eating at the dinner. We assure you that provisions were made to cater for the number of students we anticipated, we take responsibility for the percentage that wasn’t catered for and reassure you of our further initiatives that would fill in the gap created”

“Furthermore, we assure the entire student community of our commitment to ensuring fairness at all our activities and engagements, and in respect to the pageantry, we find it necessary to make clarifications on the nuances around the final result. The final result of the pageantry is usually determined by cumulative scores from the online contests, trainings, bootcamp, sales of tickets and, of course, the appearances on stage,” it added.

Meanwhile, the public apology  has sparked several reactions from attendees, many of whom are students of the University, after the memorandum was shared on the Union’s X handle.

According to @justice_chronic, who tagged the Union’s executives as “thieves” and accused them of deceit, the servers allegedly ignored many students while some tables were served multiple times, leaving others with only water.

“It took you all this long to resolve into this damage control. The fact stands that some tables were served more than twice, and more tables were intentionally ignored by a lot of those welfare ladies that looked like bongafish who turned deaf ears to even the early attendees,” he wrote.

“My own is, UISU must refund our money, water is not 3k even at the most expensive restaurants,” he added.

Similarly, @Omoshalewa496 condemned what she  described as the unfair distribution of meals at the dinner event.

“My own anger was that some VIP and VIP tables were served 3 times,” she wrote.

Moreover, @jeff_Okhai, who tagged the Union’s handle while demanding accountability for the funds, shared screenshots from WhatsApp chats and statuses showing students’ dissatisfaction.

“The Students’ Union of University of Ibadan organized a dinner for students, and ended up scamming them as they could not get the value of 3k each all students paid,” he noted.