It is called female students' village and truly, the administration therein isn't far from provincial. Located at the entrance of the university, with boulevards of ornamental plants beautifying or maybe concealing the rot that goes in here too. Many students get stranded and become "homeless after concluding their first years on campus in Angola or Mozambique halls l of residence and are therefore left to find their "squareroots" {A good number of students do not even get bed spaces as freshmen}.The level at which accommodation is scarce in OAU calls for desperation and everyone scrambles for whatever space is available. As a matter of fact, even finding a rhino's tooth doesn't pose as much difficult as getting living spaces on our ivory tower.
In this desperation, OAU's female students' village is therefore flooded year in year out with prospective tenants. The crux of the matter and the real bone of contention that makes one furious is the state of the space which isn't commiserate with the exorbitant rent the spaces are given out at. The owners make quite mammoth amount of money but offer quite infinitesimal service to the tenants. When one steps into maintenance, the sight that greets one is a long winding dirt and dusty road, moving on, no visible general drainage that will curb the natural occurrence of flooding and erosion. Now, structures sprout like grasses every other day, each owner trying to outdo the other by constructing sprawling structures and by offering better facilities than the previously constucted ones. Comprador buorgeoises and very self serving capitalists whose singular intent is maximization of profits at the expense while robbing students of their monies.
The most unpalatable experience one can have in maitenance is to come visiting when the rains are at their utmost intensity. Of course, we cant stop nature from doing its work, but we can learn to stop it from getting us stuck in muddy pools. The roads leading to this supposedly luxurious hostels are in utterly deplorable states, the roads become very swampy and waterlogged during incessant rainfalls, they are far from welcoming, maybe the message they silently convey to visitors are: "stay your houses".Walking successfully on these roads requires a pedestrian raising up trousers or long skirts, whichever case, bikemen motorists seeking alternative routes or driving with expert caution and wading gingerly though the puddle of muddiness.
Many female OAU students prefer living in the students' village because it poses less security threats than residences in town, that is outside campus. Coupled with this is the stable powers supply and its proximity to the campus area itself. It is true the university has little or no influence about policies in maintenance and its state of affairs; and the property is only leased out for a period of time but there could be the need to look into it in order to protect the interest of her students, her stakeholders. Now that the rent has been increased in all the 15{and still counting}hostels, this calls for rectitude,extirpate interest in these hostels,a balanced increase in maintenance, welfarism and ultimately, improvement in the state of the roads so we can at least get deserving dividends for the rent our parents get through their toils and some of us, through personal hustles We also hope when the properties are passed on to the university and they are left to be overseen by the university management, we hope to see visible changes and better welfare packages as the mother hen has now taken over tending her own chicks,the hawks must sway.
Omolola Afolabi is an arts enthusiast,a social critic,broadcast and print journalist and a budding academia .She currently studies at Obafemi Awolowo University,Ile Ife.
No comments:
Post a Comment