The most widespread student-centric news from UNILAG in 2026, yet, is the reinstatement of her student union government, ten years after its proscription in 2016. As random as that could have been to the average chronically online adult, it opened a can of conversations, of which one of the most prominent talking points was how the university waited for those who understood Aluta and unionism to have graduated before reinstating the union. As a UI student, that probably rings a bell, and you are not wrong to wonder where you’ve seen such a playbook before.
A striking but usual common feature of student unions across different universities during their early years of establishment is the vibrancy – and the University of Lagos wasn’t an exception, especially ranking amongst the top five oldest universities in Nigeria. The University of Lagos Student Union (ULSU) has its roots deeply in radical activism, advocacy for student welfarism, and confrontation with management and federal government, handy traits to deal with the powers that be in the 1960s and 70s. In 1978, under the regime of General Olusegun Obasanjo (Rtd), a protest erupted after the announcement – made by the then Minister of Education, Ahmadu Ali – of an increase in daily meal tickets by 50 kobo, from ₦1.50 to ₦2. At the centre of the demonstration dubbed ‘Ali Must Go Protest’, was the National Union of Nigerian Universities (NUNS) President and student of UNILAG, Late Segun Okeowo. An avid reader of the UIMSA Press would notice the same historical reference from our May 20, 2025, editorial on the alarming rot in the UI’ SU. Much like in 1971 when a turning point came for the University of Ibadan Students’ Union after the death of Kunle Adepeju, the Ali Must Go protest took a turning point when Akintunde Ojo was shot in the leg by the police and refused treatment at Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), and Orthopaedic Hospital, Igbobi. That singular incident sent shockwaves across the country and what was a campus incident became a national crisis, so incidental that it led to the banning of NUNS by the federal government.
The condemnation in the 1970s still didn’t see the end of activism which was an integral in student unionism. If anything, it morphed into activism for better governance at the national level, despite being university students. They understood the consequences of allowing wicked people to rule the country and they couldn’t fold their arms while that happened. That, three decades ago, is a marked contrast to what we have on university campuses today where students, under the guise of being politically active, champion the voices of those who steal from them and shamelessly sell them hopes. The 1990s saw the rise of Olusegun Mayegun, former National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) President and UNILAG student, and the more popular Omoyele Sowore, a former UNILAG student who served as SUG president between 1992 and 1994. These individuals were very active during the June 12 elections annulment period and the larger pro-democracy movement in that decade. Even in the face of suppression, arrests – alongside prominent personalities like Femi Falana, Gani Fawehinmi, Baba Omojola, expulsion, extended academic years, they fought till they couldn’t. This decade further solidified the Aluta in UNILAG, most especially with the frontliners of national resistance studying in the same school. The tyranny wasn’t just at the national level; university management also tried to cut the wings of these people that dared. They punished this radical leadership with expulsion – the most they could have done as the authorities.
All these are historical tales with no reference to the present because what we read about the 1960s-1990s in the papers is not what we are living in, in 2026. It would seem as activism, in the daring form it existed as then, waned off at the turn of 21st century. Because in the progression of what we now refer to as history, the university successfully banned the ULSU after the 2016 protest against inadequate municipal facilities, including electricity and water supply – same low-quality problems the University of Ibadan students protested against in 2024, eight years later. The university management paused the academic session, sent students home, and resumed on May 2, 2016, with strict and tough conditions like referral to the school’s website for adherence to the downloading and filling of undertaking and indemnity form, which became a culture thenceforth. Most routines went back to normal except that 1. A certain Olorunfemi Adeyeye, a student activist from the department of Building, was served a four-semester suspension – that dragged on for five years – on account of writing a critical article against the university senate before he eventually signed out in 2023 and 2. Operations of the ULSU which remained banned until 2026 when the university, in its characteristic shameless and undignified way, reinstated the union and inaugurated a president that was not voted for by the university students.
The 2016 UNILAG incident – specifically between April 6 to April 8, 2016 – wasn’t so far off from the same incident in 1971 that led to the painful death of University of Ibadan’s Kunle Adepeju. It is the same progression of the break out of a protest, management deploying armed men on unarmed students, armed men tear gassing the school campus, students refusing to retreat and sending counter-directives to the school management. In fact, you can pick out striking similarities from the 1978 incident at UNILAG, and many other historical events in federal varsities across the country. The more painful realization is that these accounts from decades ago before democracy, and years after the advent of democracy, are all centered around students protesting light and water; basic amenities that should never require placards and chants.
These similarities in the violent histories etched in our memories go further to corroborate the fact that ideal unionism was not spawned out of thin air, our heroes past and their colleagues who were victims of circumstances lived it. More importantly, they are the powers that be in many federal universities today. To see that these people become the most active in administration and remember they are still in power when students’ voices become resistant to unfair and insensitive treatment is very ironic, bearing in mind that they once protested this and were attacked for it. And it has become very characteristic of the elders of our state, across medicine, politics, and even activism, to become repulsive to the very idealogy they championed in their youthful years. It is sad in itself that students are still protesting for basic amenities in 2026, it’s further perplexing that the university authorities can go as far as deploying armed men to open fire on unarmed students whom they wouldn’t take so long to claim as their own when they go on to do exploits far beyond the shores.
In bending towards the will of the students, these authorities still exercise an astronomical level of interference into the affairs of student unionism. Just as it exists in micro-fashion in UI where the Registrar is the chairperson of the Students’ Union Electoral Commission (SUEC), it materialises in macro-fashion in UNILAG where they pick who they want as the president of a STUDENTS’ union. Sources from UNILAG reported that the management drafted a constitution that makes only faculty presidents eligible to contest for the position, and that is even an offshoot of the part of the constitution that makes only final year students eligible to run for faculty presidents – of which aspirants would have to be screened by the Dean of Students Affairs. What it means for the average student is that the school makes sure your faculty president is in his final year when he has so much to lose academically and would rather bend to the whims and caprices of the school management than stand with the students. It is from these individuals that the SUG president is selected from. What manner of devolvement has happened with the unionism that students can’t even exercise their enfranchisement on leadership positions? How bad has it gotten that students have become pawns in the unionism that is formed by them, of them, and for them?
These – now overflogged – issues are not agitating the average student well enough because everybody has become so mentally fatigued that they just want to study and graduate. It’s a valid stance, albeit a defeated mindset and we are only setting up our unionism to become so redundant where students own no voices and every tenure is just a cycle of elections, inauguration, some legislative/leadership summits, courtesy visits, and celebration weeks, with, of course, a tenure-ending long X thread of accomplishments. The consequences aren’t far-fetched; the UIMSA Press, in her previous articles, has highlighted the ripple effects of such interference and we are only just living in the tip of the iceberg.
