The largest faculty by student number. The main campus’ most modern piece of architectural theatre. The last, barely functional infrastructural remnants of the university’s once vibrant sporting community. The university’s most deliberate bridge between the Nigerian academy and the wider world.
The Faculty of Education, the CBN Centre for Economics and Finance (currently occupying the site of the former Sports Pavillion) , the Old Sports Complex and Gymnasium, and the Institute of African Studies might seem, at least on first glance, functionally disjointed components of the engine that is the University of Ibadan and its student community. A more Korzybskian look at these components, however, one that goes beyond their names to the actual territory, reveals a more vital, more mundane interdependence than will ever be apparent from just reading their names on whichever device you are viewing this article with.
The Sports Complex Road, a near half-kilometre stretch of asphalt branching off of the larger Social Sciences Road, served to bridge this disconnect. And bridge it, it did, until well, it couldn’t anymore.
Every morning, as dark and early as 6am, the quiet of the previous night gently pours over, and then, Mrs Love begins. With every measured swipe of her broom at the debris left by the many overarching trees shielding the road from the sun and the seeds left by the rodents who feed on them, the sound of her presence sweeps through the vicinity of the Faculty of Education. It is the type of calm and mundane ritual needed, ironically perhaps, to open proceedings for a day bound to be unrecognisable in a matter of minutes.
And as the hours go by and the sun begins to pry, the fight for right-of-way gradually becomes a gruelling affair dictated by a cacophony of noises. Vehicle horns.
The urgency of two drivers going opposite ways, or one trying to overtake the other, either party desperately seeking some mystical, hidden shortcut to teleport them to their respective anticipated destinations, devoid of the need to swear at the inconsiderate driver who parked their Sienna by the pavement of the narrow road making the road appear more of a needle’s eye than an actual motorway.
Students like Abimbola chatter and gist on their daily walks between the Faculty of Education’s three separate building complexes, rushing to and from classes on their commute from Queen Idia Hall. Postgraduate students like Adeshina board keke drops from the main gate; he, like many other postgraduate students, comes every day from outside the campus to finance lectures held in the CBN building directly overlooking the road.
A little to the left of the pavement, on the descent towards the Faculty of Education and Institute of African Studies, Mrs Blessing resumes duty, cleaning up and setting her snack stand for sale. Her stall sits at a strategic location, feeding the breakfast-seeking, saving the rushing students who cannot afford the detour to where the other larger kiosks are situated.
And on Fridays and Sundays, when everyone is at their Jum’at and church bests, respectively, the pavements are littered with the photogenic, trying out different poses against the grand backdrop of the CBN building. The photographers, however, are guided by an unofficial rule: angle the camera upward, making conscious efforts to avoid the road behind slipping into the picture frame. It seems a strange rule, but it will all make sense in a bit.
Sports Complex Road, a day after some light showers the night before. The CBN Centre for Excellence sits in its backdrop.
This was the routine that defined a typical week on the Sports Council Road until the first cracks began to appear, now more than three years ago.
Sometime in April 2025, the University of Ibadan was paid a rare, personal visit by the Minister of Works, Senator David Umahi, who was on a ‘regional tour of Southwestern road projects’. Appalled by the state of the intra-campus road network and infrastructure, his assessment during a meeting with the recently outgone Vice Chancellor Prof. K. O. Adebowale and other key stakeholders in the university administration were blunt
“What we have seen here is very discouraging. I think we should do more for our universities than create new ones. The infrastructure, the houses , they need very serious attention. And there are no routes to the university.” He said, criticising the state of the roads in the school.
Promising an immediate, targeted federal intervention, the minister directed management to submit a full layout of the campus road network, “arranged in order of priorities”, promising concrete paving, solar lighting, and CCTV integration. Further stating that “We are going to use concrete roads to intervene. And we are going to also put solar lights in any of the roads we are going to be building. We may also incorporate CCTV within the solar lights so that the vice-chancellor can channel it to a point where they can view all the roads we are going to be constructing.”
A year on from that meeting, large-scale renovation has been seen in many of the major roads on campus. From late 2025 into early 2026, heavy-duty machinery and the noise they brought became a welcome commonplace, as the black of fresh asphalt made a return, replacing the brown of mud and sound that had riddled the previously damaged roads in said locations.
The route from Main Gate to Access Bank, past St Anne’s Female Hostel, by way of Barth Road, enjoyed a complete facelift, with the project continuing downwards until just before Awo Hostel Junction. The roads around the Staff Quarters, too, Upper and Lower Ijeoma, benefited from this intervention, as well as the road in front of Jaja (Jaja Avenue and Lander Road), with a shortcut beside Kuti Hall, leading to the Department of Aquaculture, which, prior to the renovation, had lost motorable fitness.
Yet, it seems to be the case then that arguably one of the most important roads serving the university’s largest faculty, its primary cultural institute, and hundreds of residents on this campus, the Sports Complex, failed to make the ‘order of priorities’ the minister referred to.
For Mrs Blessing, who had watched the caterpillars arrive at Jaja Avenue with something close to gratitude, the disappointment was personal.
“When they started doing that Jaja one (Jaja Avenue road), we were all happy.” She recalls, looking on as students from a department nearby took turns to cross a pothole, a car carefully crawling past, itself trying to navigate the potholes, while inevitably narrowing the already narrow.
“I was even thanking God that ah, the government has finally remembered us. And then, the caterpillars left. We were still waiting.” She added, in annoyance.
As the various satellite images would reveal if checked, and as the staff and students who navigate this road daily testify, things weren’t always this way. The decay was not some overnight disaster. It was slow, heavily documented erosion, one that went on too fast for its users to become accustomed to, grew too severe for them to fix, and still remained too vital to completely abandon.
The state of the road now, as the keke tries to manoeuvre the potholes in the backgroun
And what is the cost of this neglect? Families now have to spend more than they used to, with fuel and vehicle maintenance taking pole position in their weekly budgets. Mrs Ajuwape*, a secondary school teacher and spouse of a university staff member, knows this intimately. Standing near the only patch of asphalt that wasn’t already consumed by the clay brown of pothole water, heavy rain had hit campus the day before as she pointed down the road her daughter’s school bus once took.
“The alternative route I use now, even though it is longer, still eats into fuel money, but at least I won’t have to worry too much about car washing and repairs the way I would have been worrying if I was still using this road. There is no escape anywhere; we will still have to spend money.” Now, she takes the longer route.
But it’s not only the residents who are held ransom by the hydra-headed victimisation this road brings. The university staff too, especially those whose primary duties revolve around the functioning of the road. No one seems to be spared from the consequences of government neglect.
Mrs Love was hard at work when UIMSA Press contacted her, and the toll was visible. Between swipes of her broom, she gestured at the overflowing potholes we were both standing beside. Complaining;
“All this water, it is really affecting me. It does not allow me to sweep as I’m supposed to sweep. Sometimes keke or car will splash water when I’m sweeping. I hope the government can come and put concrete in all these holes, so it will be easier for me.”
The bulk of the burden is borne heavily by the many students who, more often than not, find the 500 naira cost of taking a taxi drops to class just to avoid navigating the road mess unnecessarily. But it’s the more subtle things that pose not necessarily a debilitating problem but an annoying, needless disturbance.
For Abimbola, an undergraduate from the Faculty of Education, it’s a daily negotiation between convenience and cleanliness. The walk from Queen Idia Hall via Tech Road to the faculty is shorter than the detour through the Faculty of Arts side. But the cost lands on her feet, literally.
“It’s always my shoes and my socks every time I pass this place. I don’t really have an alternative option since the walk from Idia, Tech Road, to here is shorter than if I now go and pass that longer Faculty of Arts side. It won’t make sense for me to be doing all of that just so my shoes won’t get stained, you know?”
She pauses, glancing back at the CBN building behind us.
“It doesn’t even speak well of the school. Say when a big event is to be held in this CBN Building, how would they fix it in short notice? How will the guests reach here? What will people say about the first and best? They really need to work on it soon.”
The economic costs are still too heavy to dismiss casually. Adeshina, a postgraduate student from finance who attends lectures in CBN, sees the road as an unnecessary financial drain on students who are already stretched.
“We pay more unnecessary funds to take a drop here just to avoid the water staining our clothes. The government and the university should please look into this road, because apart from the poor look this road gives to one of the most beautiful buildings on campus, it serves too many a demographic to just watch it get worse!”
The deterioration has not been caused by government neglect alone, as damage has continued to worsen due, in no small part, to the repeated impact of the heavy-duty trucking employed on the road, the only road it seems that can serve as the primary access route to providing access to the already. The apparent ongoing expansion of the Kenneth Dike Library, which has encroached on land previously part of the Old Sports Complex, has brought further construction traffic through the already weakened remnants of the road.
The absence of any proper drainage system around those roads is also worthy of mention, as with every downpour that erodes the already exposed soil in the potholes, the water has nowhere to go but further deep into the cracks – the same cracks that first appeared in 2024, opened by years of use and inattention.
There is thus a profound, systemic irony in watching an institution desperately attempting to build its future, one that will apparently be dictated merely by which buildings stand tallest, whilst quietly destroying its present, failing to carry along the institution and the people this future is supposedly being built for.
On paper, the University remains the regional stalwart it touts itself to be: new TETFUNDed academic buildings, expanding library footprints, and TIMES rankings. But as Alfred Korzybski warned, the map is not the territory. We must be careful not to mistake the mere label of a thing, for the thing itself. It is first and best on the map, and Sports Complex road is the territory that name has to answer to. On the actual ground, where hefty truck tyres pulverize what little asphalt is left and the rain quietly dissolves the ground beneath it; the daily tax of this neglect is paid for by those least equipped to bear it.
And so, tomorrow morning, the CBN Building will sit there, bathing in the dawn of that early morning Vitamin A sun, looking down with disgust, lost at what has befallen its entrance. Mrs Love will be there too, broom in hand, dustpan in the other, working around the edges of potholes too wide to sweep across, doing what she can with what the road gives her.
Friday will come, and the photographers and the iPhone cameras will assume their precarious position, everyone trying to avoid the stain, the eyesore of a road, that might inflict on the picture. It is a Pavlovian response – muscle memory developed, not by formal instruction, but by the gradual absorption of the knowledge that some truths are best kept outside of the frame.
The Ministry promised roads, but the Faculty of Education’s students still have scum on their shoes, and Adeshina will still keep paying for drops he shouldn’t have to. Until Sports Complex Road finds its way into someone’s ‘order of priorities’, nothing will change. The university will continue to force its community to walk through the mire while admiring the view to their left.
Oluwatimilehin Akinboye.