On the 11th of June, 2025, Dr. Philip O. Ozuah, alongside other distinguished guests who are alumni of the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, commissioned the Block C as the first of six blocks being developed for accommodation. Today, 348 days later, the hostel is yet to be open for habitation for her students.
Accommodation has been a longstanding problem for students in the College of Medicine, and the existence of building projects to create more spaces introduced an atmosphere of relief. This atmosphere is even further kept hopeful with handsome donations coming in from individuals like Dr. Ozuah himself, many other big names at home and abroad, and graduating classes of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. Through the passage of time, conversations and meetings have been held to materialise these buildings and ease the strain of numbers on spaces. The press has done her fair share of contribution in reporting the dilemma that accommodation throws students into, the crises of navigating medical school without a space in the College to call theirs, and even the more recent cacophony that resulted from the uniqueness of having four full classes of medical and dental students, alongside students in other departments under the college, in Alexander Brown Hall. A very integral event from that time was the townhall meeting that was held on January 8, 2026, where petitions were signed by over 250 students to make Ozuah block available for habitation. Eight days later, the then ABH Executive Council sent a broadcast stating they received a confirmation that the block was expected to be ready for habitation within six weeks. Eighteen weeks later since that broadcast, the block is not open.
Even the College of Medicine website has articles, of which some are inaccessible at the time of this writing, that speak to the dire need of spaces and the progress done to make the blocks available as soon as possible. On the 9th of February, 2026, the Provost of the College led members of the College Executive Committee on an inspection of the hostel building project, and this happened within the six-week window as earlier indicated in the January 16 broadcast. It has also been another 15 weeks since that inspection date and there’s no such thing as even a hearsay on when the block is going to be open. Again, the January 16 broadcast wrote that ‘efforts are currently focused on addressing Water, Light, Security, Staffing, General management concerns,’ none of which have been communicated as resolved as a form of progress report.
Most importantly, this pin-drop silence has been going on without a break, despite reports of some students being robbed of their priced possessions because they had to commute back to their place outside the hospital premises due to lack of spaces within. June 11, 2026, will make it one year since the commissioning of Block C, known as the Philip Ozuah Block, and it remains to be seen if students stand a chance of being accommodated there anytime soon.