The second semester at the University of Ibadan is unofficially the semester of social activities; many halls, departments, and faculties opt to schedule most of whatever social events they have lined up for their students in the second semester. As a result, for most students, it will seem as though the semester is shorter than the first because one minute, they are turning up at a hangout or movie night, and the next minute, exams are staring them right in the face. This same unofficial convention applies to most football tournaments organized in the university, with most HOD Cups, Dean’s Cups, CBN Cup, Survival Cup, Super Cup, and the Inter-Hall football competitions all traditionally played in the second semester.
Usually, this has never really been a problem, but the peculiarities surrounding this second semester have made the SUB Football Pitch a hive of never-ending football matches, so much that it almost cannot cater to the football needs of the students in the university. If you’ve walked certain lengths in this school, the first thought that crosses your mind after the previous sentence would be ‘What about the Awo stadium?’ We will answer that question in due course, but first, what are the earlier mentioned peculiarities that affected this semester?
This semester, like most after the COVID-19 break and the 8-month ASUU strike, was shortened to eleven weeks of lectures. Also, Christmas and New Year celebrations happened to fall right in the middle of these eleven weeks, and although the university doesn’t officially give week-long breaks during this period, most students unapologetically take the next cabs/buses/trains/flights back home to spend time with their friends and families. So, football activities cannot be held during this 12 or 13-day celebratory period. If you also exclude the very first week of resumption in the semester, sport directors of various faculties, departments, and even the student union have a very congested 8 weeks to hold all the footballing activities of the semester, while still consciously staying afloat in school work.
The venue of all of these activities is the SUB pitch, as everyone calls it, or the Old Football/Soccer pitch, as the members of the university sports council call it. They call it that because they claim that the pitch is not the University of Ibadan’s original space for a stadium but rather the property of the premier faculty, Faculty of Arts, but that’s a story for another day. To use the pitch, teams must get permission from the office of the Director of Sports, University of Ibadan. Regardless of the 2,000 Naira sports levy paid under the Bundle Fee by every student of the university, this seeking of permission is understandable as it would ensure that there is orderliness in its usage.
The process of obtaining permission is not complex. The steps are:
- Submitting a letter that is addressed to the university’s director of sports on the sports council. The letter must be on faculty, hall, or department letterhead or that of a recognized organization.
- In the letter, you must state the date and time you want to use the field. You must also ensure that first aid and officials will be available during the match.
- Then, after some time, you go back to get your stamped approval. Make photocopies of the approval, holding on to one and leaving one with the sports council.
This method has been functional over time, but the peculiarities of this semester has exposed significant issues with the protocol. The sports council do not effectively track the match-time that they approve. For example, a faculty’s sports director can have an approved letter to use the field to play two matches starting at 2 PM; and then another faculty’s sports director holding an approval letter to play their own match(es) starting at 3 PM. Remember that for most competitive matches, each half would last for at least 25 minutes. When you add stoppage time, halftime, and the time it takes to line up, at the very least, each game takes a minimum of an hour. So, there is no way teams would not encroach on other teams’ times. In fact, in the Super Cup organized by the student union as part of the SU Week this session, Ibadan Medicine’s first game against Economics, which was scheduled to be held by 5 PM on the 6th of December, was postponed till the 8th of December. This caused some of the medical students, who already came from UCH, to go back without having done anything in UI, in essence, wasting their transport fares. The whole situation was caused by the inefficient tracking of time by the sports council and also the congestion of fixtures that day. The Faculty of Education played their Dean’s Cup on the 6th, so about six games were supposed to be played on the SUB pitch that day.
As a result of these issues, sports directors across the board, in conjunction with the student union’s sports secretary, have innovatively set up a fourth step where a sports director who has gotten permission sends his/her date and time to a WhatsApp group that houses all the sports directors of various halls, faculties, departments, organizations, and other relevant stakeholders in the university. This is done to check with the other sports directors to avoid clashes with time spent on the field.
The university’s sports council calls Awo Stadium the New Stadium mini-pitch. This is because, in the original design, this stadium is supposed to be a mini sports complex, while the major sports complex of the university is planned to be built somewhere close to the Distance Learning Centre, along Ajibode Road. That sports complex has not been developed till today; in fact, the mini sports complex (Awo Stadium) we use was developed because the university was to host the 2002 NUGA Games. But again, these are stories for another day.
Now, to Awo stadium. Why can’t some of the sports directors request permission to use the Awo Stadium instead of everyone queuing to use the SUB pitch? As is in the Christian Holy Book, the answer is money. Money to book the pitch, money to cater to the logistics of having to transport players and fans alike to the stadium just off Barth Road. Unlike the SUB pitch, where all you need to do is to submit your letter, the sports council is usually reluctant to grant permission to use Awo stadium, and even when they do, it comes at a cost: a 20,000 Naira non-refundable fee plus the approved letter. The sports council explains that this non-refundable fee is for cleaning and maintenance of the stadium. So, it is perfectly logical that these sports directors would rather channel the money entrusted to them into other things than pay to use a pitch when they could get another for no cost at all. Also, because the stadium is far away from the centre of the school, the assurance that fans would be present in their numbers is very shaky. SUB is centralized and close to most places, so this is not an issue.
This dependence on only the SUB pitch has cost the student population. How? Firstly, although the CBN Cup — a tournament exclusively for 100-level students — is usually held in the first semester. For some reason, this session’s edition started in the second semester, adding to the already packed fixture load, and since November that it kicked off, the competition is still ongoing. This is because the pitch hasn’t been free for the students to play all their games at the appropriate times. Also, the Survival Cup for sophomores, another big cup in the university, would most likely not hold this session. Again, this is due to the fixture congestion from the Dean’s, HOD’s, and Super Cups. Gone are the days when you’d see random students of the university play friendly matches – matches like team Messi vs. team Ronaldo – or even see the school team training with Coach Allen on the SUB pitch.
The university has seventeen faculties (undergraduate programs); of these seventeen, only Clinical Sciences, Dentistry, and Technology do not use the SUB pitch for all of its faculty and departmental games. Some of the solutions that could be explored to reduce the load on the pitch in second semesters include a meeting in which all the sports directors and relevant stakeholders are present, where they effectively distribute these cup competitions into the two semesters. Most of the departments in the Faculty of Technology already do this. They play their HOD’s Cup in the first semester in a 5-a-side format, making use of Zik Maracana, Indy Maracana, and sometimes even the cricket pitch beside the main SUB pitch. Some of the other departments could also consider adopting this. Also, for the Dean’s Cup that has to be played in the second semester, more faculties should emulate the Faculty of Education, who usually organize theirs early in the semester, so that by the 6th-7th week, they would already be done with the tournament. Finally, the university sports council should make use of an efficient tracking system that allocate match durations to teams without one game time overlapping into another, leading to unsportsmanlike compromises.
Students of the University of Ibadan have often been stereotyped as being overly studious. The correctness of that is not up for debate right now but an obvious truth is that the football culture in the university is currently very healthy — perhaps the healthiest it has been in a while — with different hall leagues and competitions being held at various times during the session. This is a good thing, and this culture must not fizzle out right before our eyes.
Gerald Olokungbemi.
