It is especially pertinent to discuss the peaks and troughs of journalism at a time like this, on May 3rd, World Press Freedom Day, especially as pertains to the University of Ibadan community, and more specifically, the University of Ibadan Medical Students’ Association Press. Some twelve months since the first editorial from a unified UIMSA Press, Towards Healing With The Pen, we find ourselves in a drastically changed landscape, repositioned for even greater impact.
There are stories everywhere for those with eyes to see. We exist in a community with headlines at every turn—a multitude of events held weekly, great accomplishments by the trailblazers of the university, and most sinisterly, overwhelming injustice perpetuated by those who do not believe in the ability of the system to stop them in their tracks. Herein lies the role of the press, a body so often chastised as focusing on the more negative side of things, rather than promoting the good that does happen within the community. It is simple—we cannot be responsible for this balancing act alone, criticising the missteps of those at the helm of affairs, and promoting the merits of subsistence farming or whatever meaningless positive we try to glean from this burning house surrounding us in the same breath like some mainstream Nigerian news authorities tend to do.
Why so? To try to maintain this 50-50 balance when it evidently is not the reality would be to be lukewarm, an action criticised by Dante Alighieri and Jesus of Nazareth alike. Were we like the church in Laodicea, to be neither cold nor hot, we would have no fate other than to be spat out from the mouth of public consciousness—for a body which has no stance, blowing with every wind and every whimsy, is not a body to be trusted. If you have ears, then listen to what the Spirit says to the churches! A famous quote commonly misattributed to Dante Alighieri goes, “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” The origin of this apocryphal saying lies with 35th President of the United States of America, John F. Kennedy, who made these remarks in Bonn, West Germany, at the signing of a charter establishing the German Peace Corps on June 24th, 1963, a mere five months before his eventual assassination. The first Roman Catholic to be elected US President, he’d have been especially familiar with the Revelation 3:14-16 passage decrying the neutrality of the church in Laodicea, and most importantly, an avid reader of Dante, reinterpreting specifically the great philosopher’s Divine Comedy, repurposing the third canto of Inferno, first canticle of the narrative poem. Here, stood between the gates of Inferno and Paradiso, Dante encountered souls rejected by hell and heaven and they are lambasted by his guide, Virgil. because they committed neither good deeds nor sinful acts, choosing pusillanimity instead.
... This miserable mode
Maintain the melancholy souls of those
Who lived withouten infamy or praise.
Commingled are they with that caitiff choir
Of Angels, who have not rebellious been,
Nor faithful were to God, but were for self.
The heavens expelled them, not to be less fair;
Nor them the nethermore abyss receives
For glory none the damned would have from them.
...
These have no longer any hope of death;
And this blind life of theirs is so debased,
They envious are of every other fate.
No fame of them the world permits to be;
Misericord and Justice both disdain them.
Let us not speak of them, but look and pass.
And forthwith Dante comprehended, that this was the sect of the caitiff wretches hateful to God and to his enemies.
It is a scathing rebuke of those who are neither here nor there, with these tortured cowards described later in the passage as dead. They are said to be envious of even the sinners who burn in hell, for their anonymous, inconsequential fate is too much to bear. It is an original twist of the predating bible verse, showcasing Dante’s literary skill and marking this work, the Divine Comedy, as a paragon of Western Literature, influencing values even 700 years later. In Italy, these sentences would be engraved on the hearts of every schoolboy, marking neutrality out as the greatest sin of all. And in time, this sentiment would spread to the next great bastion of civilisation, the United States. Supported by Henry Dwight Sedgwick’s essays, it would be a matter of great political debate, especially as more countries entered the fracas during World War I. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who led America into the Second World War, was an avid reader of Dante, thoroughly forsaking neutrality in US foreign policy. This Modus Operandi would continue through to JFK later on, and even to today, marking the US Government out as perhaps the greatest disciple of Dante, thoroughly averse to neutrality, for better or worse—their involvements in foreign disputes cementing their status as a world power and in the same vein, creating far-reaching enmities.
But it is this aversion to neutrality the press must adopt in her affairs, this willingness to always take a stance, to make enemies and damn the consequences. JFK, a former journalist himself, would make use of the Dante apocryphism at least 25 times in his political career, transforming the statement into a call to action in and of itself.
In a university where the management and the Students’ Union are quick to laud their achievements at every opportunity, it is the duty of a free press to call attention to the lapses they so willfully ignore. That then is the role of the UCJ, and by extension, UIMSA Press in acting as checks and balances. And this is why this delicate counterbalancing act is even more at risk today, given the University’s crackdown on journalists. Naturally, the University of Ibadan has a long history of suppressing expression, most notable of these events being the suspension of Adekunle Adebajo, author of the now-infamous Guardian piece—UI: The irony of fashionable rooftops and awful interiors. But for the university to so overtly interfere with the Press, to physically assault campus journalists, is a new low. During the swearing-in and inauguration ceremony of union executives, campus journalists recording the manhandling of controversially-disqualified Obafemi Awolowo Hall Majority Leader-elect were themselves manhandled by security forces, operatives going as far as slapping these students of the University and seizing their phones.
At the time of writing, the University management is most-incomprehensibly, still yet to take action over this injustice. No errant security personnel have been sanctioned, and not even an apology to the affected persons is forthcoming. Any institutional reform seems only a far-off dream, and one must wonder how such a citadel of learning has come to be a caricature of itself.
Despite these challenges, the press must continue her role as a watchdog, firmly taking up a stance against injustice. In the past year, UIMSA Press has been the foremost coverer of the electricity issues in the University College Hospital, Ibadan, setting the pace even for national dailies, and that fact we take pride in, even moreso than our Best Departmental Local Press Organisation nod at the UCJ-UI Awards Night. Because at the end of the day, the fact that we can be a repository of information in the years to come, documenting the struggle and standing on the side of the truth, is what healing with the pen truly means to us.
Our role as skalds, covering the ever-evolving Alexander Brown Hall electricity saga looks set to continue given recent developments. ABH’s electricity issues have metamorphosed from persistent transformer malfunctions to multiple full-on disconnections, the longest of which gained international acclaim, to empty platitudes, a throng of protests, and a long-overdue reconnection, only for us to be back where we all started—today, Saturday, May 3rd, 2025, marks four days since ABH was once again thrown into darkness, this time, apparently owing to a disconnection of the College of Medicine, UI, as a whole. So once again, we must pick up our pens to draw attention to the decay that surrounds us in this University, seeking to provide an accurate history taking and a meticulous plan. Because if we don’t heal with the pen, who will?