Multiple trees were felled at the Heritage Park, UI, in the early hours of Thursday, 21st November 2024, drawing reactions from current students and alumni, alike.
The felling, which is the most recent in an increasing number across the campus, was accompanied by complaints from students in the Queen Elizabeth II Hall, sometime around 4 AM. However, it wasn’t until the later hours, between 6 AM to 8 AM, that most discovered the cause of the noise; trees were already reduced to stumps.
On X (formerly Twitter), reactions trailed user Capt. Aderigbigbe Nurudeen B.’s (@nbaderigigbe) post of two pictures showing the cut-down trees. “It makes no sense.That garden makes the school so beautiful. The ambience it gives” one user said, while another, commented, “This school has a lot, A LOT of unused land with bushes. Whatever they want to use land for, why didn’t they go there instead of destroying Heritage Park and all the nice spots they’ve been deforesting?”. Others sought to know the reason behind the felling, with one user, saying “I saw it this morning, and I am very much interested in the justifiable reason for cutting down the trees”.
When contacted by the Press on the matter, the UI’ SU President, Aweda Bolaji, said, “I heard about it this morning. As at now, I have not been able to get details of the reason for the felling”.
On WhatsApp, a message titled ‘Proposed Decimation of University of Ibadan Heritage Park for New Senate Building: A Disdain for the Environment’, dated 29th March 2024, has begun making the rounds. The earliest appearance of this message appears to have been on the 30th of March, 2024, on the ‘Concerned Students’ group. In the message, signed ‘Save Our Green Spaces’, appeals were made to the University Management to rescind its decision to convert the Park into a Senate Building. The legitimacy of this supposed decision is yet to be confirmed.
This felling of trees comes in the wake of a courtesy visit by representatives of Polaris Bank PLC and the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF) over vegetation conservation to the University on 7th October 2024. In the course of the visit, the Registrar, Mr Ganiyu Saliu, had ‘reiterated the university’s dedication to conserving campus vegetation and promoting a greener environment to enhance the well-being of individuals’. There had also been tree planting to commemorate the event.