Just like the first, the second half of every academic year welcomes students with its peculiarities. Many consider it another chance to keep their Grade Point Average afloat or simply to rescue it from drowning waters, in a semester that is ironically the busier half of the session, extracurricular-wise. Many others consider it pertinent to catch breaks in their own little way, regardless of the pressure of bagging a certificate. Trips to sports arenas to pursue medals and trophies, climbs atop storied stages to deliver the best speeches since Martin Luther King’s in 1963, we all have our own little ways. Finalists brace up for their last semester in undergraduate learning, succumbing to the whims and caprices of those who supervise their projects. And in all of these? A select few welcome their colleagues with reminders of their ambitions ahead of the session that succeeds the present. It is in view of these that an average student needs deep introspection. About where they stand academically, beyond the walls of a lecture theatre, and as a member of the Student Union.
State of the Union
While it is pertinent to entertain conversations around who you deem fit to lead the Union in subsequent sessions, an introspection of the present unclouds the mind of what is wrong, what is right, and what is obtainable. The principal offices of the Union have been void of voices that properly and boldly communicate the pain of the student community. And today, we are saddled with the dilemma that we just might have lost a grasp of the understanding of Unionism. The examples are right there in our faces, from the three-session-old unstoppable fee hikes to the cross-administrational student victimisation that has been, time and time again, overflogged by local press organisations and their mother body, the UCJ. We are at a point where multiple external journalism organisations even publish news of this victimisation, and we are still not sure if we have gotten to the crest of this maelstrom.
A critical analysis of the Odedele-led administration involves a painstaking assessment of the state of the Union, since the inauguration of the elected principal officers on the 7th of March, 2025. The inauguration ceremony of Union executives is quickly morphing into a political statement of its own. For the second year in a row, this event was enveloped in chaos, Nice Linus, a participant in the previous kerfuffle, once again thrown out of Trenchard Hall unceremoniously. The icing on the cake? Campus journalists who tried to cover the incident were slapped, kicked, and had their phones seized from them. In the fashion in which our heroes past have handled such scenarios, all felicitations and photography rituals were done before appropriate intervention by the Union leaders. However, in the Union’s account of what transpired that day, they wrote that they acted ‘swiftly’ to address the situation. That fallacy was, and is still, a slap on the campus journalists who were present at the inauguration ceremony.
One would not be too wrong in predicting how the tenure would play out from that single incident at the inauguration ceremony. However, in the spirit of innovation and upholding tales of accountability, the Union leadership puts out a monthly highlight outlining their activities from the first day of the month to the last, starting from March. As expected, these highlights are clouded with courtesy visits in the hope of collaborations to make students’ lives better on campus. While these are very much appreciated by the average student, they only serve as a better amplifier of the run-arounds that Union executives are obligated to do as soon as they get into office. Also, the activities outlined in the releases don’t reflect ‘highlights’ in every sense of the word. More often than not, what is listed there are ‘activities’, just that. In other words, they are regarded as the barest minimum of a leader because, without courtesy visits, how else will a group of people who call themselves Union executives show the university management that they are respectful? What the seemingly eventful March highlights did not show you is the letdown of students who could not finalise their fees from the previous session, nor did they highlight their efforts to salvage the unfortunate situation. The then Dean of Students asked them to write an official letter requesting to suspend the session due to the failure of fees payment. While the Union President told the Press that an attempt to find a solution was underway, the fate of those students remains in the negative, with some having to indeed repeat the session.
With respect to where the shoe hurts the most – school fees increment, victimisation, and such, these highlights don’t show or specify the visits/conversations where they are brought up. That leaves the concerned student worried about the Union’s efforts in reversing/mitigating the effects of exorbitant fees plaguing the 21st-century student. It is as though we should all welcome the new normal, bend the knee to the ruling class and their loans. Just as the March highlights left out an important incident relating to students, May’s highlights left out the actuality of the congress it claimed to call. It will also interest you to know that this is September, and that Congress has still not held. Details like these that truly reflect accountability were left out of the highlights, while all other good news made the cut. Verbosity over substance in critical scenarios, where do we really go from here? These should be the objects of our deep introspection as students.
Our Immaterial Congress
In the official release of highlights, May 17th reads, ‘The Students Union released a call for Congress to discuss the pertinent issues affecting the student community’. Nothing about that Congress was highlighted throughout that month, or the next, or even the one after, because the Congress never held in the first place. It was postponed due to the absence of forming a quorum, a disgrace which the SU executives, SRC, and the student community at large are a party to. Since May 17th’s failed congress, there’s been an SRC plenary where the SU President defended the initial unilateral suspension, month-long silence without another congress, a more recent attempt to seek approval of congress, and finally, after days of delays, confirmation on Saturday, the 13th, of a 20th of September Congress. The first congress of this academic session, this will belatedly fulfil Article XIII of the Students’ Union constitution, which states that a congress must be held at least once in an academic year. But given the prevailing circumstances, it’s a wonder that this only comes now, in the second semester — and we must wonder if it simply is an attempt to fulfil all righteousness.
Away from the consistently failed and — at best — suboptimal virtual help desk platforms across departments and faculties, the Congress is the biggest gathering of students where complaints, displeasures, and the like are voiced out. If the Union has not been able to hold a congress since the beginning of the academic year, to what extent do the rosy monthly highlights of the executive council reflect the actual state of the Union? The underestimated importance of a congress is once seen in how issues like the recent student victimisation played out. As was always expected of the Student Disciplinary Committee, the disciplinary hearing pertaining to the demonstration at the inauguration ceremony of the erstwhile SU President, Aweda Bolaji, was eventually revisited one year later. At no point between the second hearing on the 30th of June, 2025, and the suspension verdict on the 14th of July, 2025, did an avenue for students to come together and find a solution to the victimisation show up. These are the flaws not voiced out or written about.
Victimisation, Again
Maybe it is selective amnesia or just the blatant apathy of the average UI student, but it seems as though many people have forgotten why this UI3 victimisation came about. In a university that thrives on the cowardice of students to implement new things as they wish, three students stood up to the authorities and said that we can’t keep paying that exorbitant amount of money to remain in a federal school. The average student is not even aware of the behind-the-scenes ‘moves’ by the SU to mediate the suspension situation, not until a two–part interview of the Union’s President by the UCJ. But trust the same SU to include hosting a space on X to talk about ‘How Unserious Students Also Pass Exams’ as a highlight for July. Even if such an activity was hosted with good intentions, the title doesn’t reflect that, and we ought to be self-aware as self-acclaimed intellectuals. We can agree on the delicacy of the victimisation situation and the need to keep things within walls as much as possible, but in cases where numbers might play out better, there’s no telling what we could have achieved if everyone stood up against that decision. This is also weighing out the possible outcomes of speaking up or not speaking at all. For the former, the best case scenario is the panel rethinking and extending grace for solidarity’s sake, and the worst case is them meting out the punishment they intended. The victims and the student community at large don’t have the luxury of these options if they don’t speak up at all. The ignorance is alarming, even at this stage of repetitive articles speaking about our laxity as a Union.
Even through this unfortunate victimisation, there have been unclear developments, one such instance being the much later invitation of Nice Linus to a disciplinary hearing slated for the 16th of September, 2025. Reports said that she couldn’t be reached during the initial hearing of the other two. This speaks to the continued determination of the University management to victimise demonstration. And as sad as it sounds, the usual will be pin-drop silence until she, too, is suspended, setting into motion a cascade of unfair punishments meted out to students for voicing their displeasure. An autocratic university authority in a democratic country, preposterous!
Call-to-Action
As a means of expressing displeasure at the four-semester suspension, Aduwo Ayodele tried to organise a physical demonstration against the verdict of the SDC panel, on account that it could happen to anybody later if not frowned at. He was met with hesitance and avoidance from students, unwilling to risk their studentship by aligning themselves with justice. That is the current state of things in the Premier university in Nigeria. Fear of speaking out and the eventual acceptance of such a verdict that puts thousands of others at risk, sooner or later. The victims have had to accept the verdict, and the atmosphere on campus is as though nothing happened.
It’s far-reaching to say that anything could have been changed as regards the outcome of that hearing, but the future can be influenced by our decisions and our resistance in this present moment. And once again, we are in election season, the air heady with the scent of ambition. If we indeed introspect deeply about where we are as a Union, the bare minimum must not excite us again because we are past that. The time to cajole students with premier intellectualism and baseless alliance is far gone. In the highlights of the administration so far, the SU executives outlined activities like the bursary scheme which they claimed paid out over two million naira as need-based bursaries, the SEALS Cup 2025, exam food packages for hundreds of students, and they have even hailed themselves as an administration that ensured students had electricity during exams as though we animals were not entitled to the bare minimum for human survival. Most of these gestures are commendable, but a Union that will change the status quo requires more than just that. It requires more than the verbosity in official releases and diplomacy in social interactions. It requires more than the false equivalence between a rugged persona and competence. If we still welcome the idea that a fellow student deserves our vote solely because they are from a particular hall, faculty, or department, then we have come a long but wrong way, and we need to retrace our steps. It still may not be so obvious now, but actions have consequences, and the inexhaustible ink won’t fail to write.
