The University of Ibadan school management has been found guilty—quite a number of times—of making decisions so anti-student and regressive that it sends a crystal clear message: The students of the premier university in the country are not anywhere near the top of the priority list of the school management. In fact, it is almost as though there is no thought to consider the opinion of the student body. One such shocking decision was the desecration of the beautiful Heritage Park. At about 4 AM on Thursday, the 21st of November, 2024, some residents of Queen Elizabeth II Hall were roused from their beds as a result of noise pollution. When the day broke, the source of the noise was found to have come from chainsaws used to level the once beautiful Heritage Park just opposite the hall. In the wake of the felling of the trees, outrage broke out on social media, with different students, alumni, and lecturers alike calling out the school management. The reason for the destruction of the park after the public outrage was that the location was going to be used to build a new Senate building for the university, and construction has since begun since that fateful day. It got even worse when you knew that the University’s Registrar, Mr. Ganiyu Saliu, had made statements along the lines of reaffirming the university’s dedication to conserving campus vegetation and promoting a greener environment when the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF) paid a courtesy visit to the university on 7th October 2024.
As much as there are other examples of where the university management disregards the opinion of the student body before important decisions that affect everyday student life are made. This editorial will focus on disregard, lack of support, lack of facilities, and a general sense of deterioration in sports at the university.
“Our athletes have talent, but we must invest in quality sports facilities to help them reach their full potential.” These words were uttered by the former president of the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF), Amaju Melvin Pinnick, at the personality lecture hosted by the Faculty of Education at Trenchard Hall on the 29th of October, 2024. For a university that claims to instill quality in every aspect of learning, academics have taken the driver’s seat while sports have been left to hitchhike. Too little is invested in sports, and even the little that has been invested in terms of infrastructure is currently not maintained properly or is being washed away.
SPORTS FACILITIES IN THE UNIVERSITY
Although not found on the university’s website, there has been talk making the rounds that in the original plan of the university, the portion of land earmarked for the development of the school’s sports complex lies close to the Distance Learning Centre (DLC) along Ajibode Road. The veracity of these talks has, however, not been ascertained. The two sports complexes identified on the university’s website are the Old Sports Complex and the New Sports Complex. The Old Sports Complex is located between the Faculty of Education, the Kenneth Dike Library, and the Faculty of Social Sciences. This complex accommodates the sports center office, four hard tennis courts, a handball court, a 50m Olympic-size swimming pool, a hockey pitch, a cricket pitch with a pavilion, and a mini multipurpose hall for indoor games like judo, taekwondo, badminton, and table tennis. In the status quo, though, badminton is played in the Sultan Bello Hall dome, while taekwondo and judo training take place in the Gamaliel Onosode Gymnasium. So, the exact location of this mini multipurpose hall is in question.
The New Sports Complex is located after Obafemi Awolowo Hall, and it accommodates a football pitch, two basketball courts (not included on the website), and a rubberized ten-lane track. On the website, the Gamaliel Onosode Gymnasium is wrongly included as one of the facilities at the New Sports Complex, but it is located behind the Faculty of Social Sciences.
Unknown to many, where the beautiful Economics building currently stands was home to the university’s sports center. The sports center was complete with a standard track, four basketball courts, and a standard football pitch, among others. It served as the focal point of all sporting activities in the school, but all of that changed around 2012 when it was demolished in order to erect the now-standing Economics building. In what must have been déjà vu for students and members of staff who witnessed the demolition of the previous sports center for the Economics building. About three years ago, the foundation for a new building—according to unverified reports, an extension of the Kenneth Dike Library—was laid on one side of the cricket and hockey pitch, just behind the handball court and adjacent to the sports center office and cricket pavilion. Although deemed “illegal,” because this land is not meant to be used for sporting activities, students have had to make do with the other side of this pitch for sporting activities ranging from hockey training and 6- and 7-aside set football games to, very importantly, football training and tournaments for female football. All these activities have now come to a halt since late March 2025, when, with no warnings issued and no information passed beforehand, the student community witnessed the dumping of multiple trailers of sand meant for construction on the pitch.
WHAT ARE THE ISSUES BEING FACED?
Presently, the issues with the current sports infrastructure are quite numerous. Firstly, a glaring omission amongst the list of sporting facilities on the school’s website is the Old SUB Football Pitch. This lends credence to the rumors that the pitch is a piece of land belonging to the Faculty of Arts and was never intended to serve as the University’s football pitch. Due to prevailing circumstances, it has, however, been serving this function, and, because of its location, ease of access, and no financial obligation before use, it is the go-to pitch for the students to use. However, a single pitch coupled with terrible administration of the pitch in terms of allocation of times for use sometimes causes congestion of the pitch, which peaked last semester. Its alternative, the Awo football pitch in the New Sports Complex, does not appeal to the majority of the students because of its distance from the central hub of the school, SUB. Students from any of the male halls who would want to utilize the pitch would have to walk several kilometers from their halls of residence in order to get to the field. More often than not, this is discouraging. Also, because it is far away from the rest of the school, on multiple occasions, unsavory elements have been reported to be found in what are supposed to be the dressing rooms, drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes, and marijuana. This calls into question the security of the sportspeople who would like to utilize the sports complex.
For athletics, the rubberized track in the stadium has seen better days, having been beaten down by the elements over the years. An athlete who would prefer to remain anonymous said, “Most times when I train now, the spikes in my boots punch holes in the track, and it kind of slows me down.”
Secondly, back to the Old Sports Complex, there are two standard volleyball courts in the Complex. In recent years, the volleyball community on campus has become very active, with sounds of shouts and balls hitting the ground heard every other evening when trainers and alumni come to train the student players. Volleyball at UI has been a huge recipient of the goodwill of Spike Rangers, a volleyball club based at the university. They have installed floodlights, bought volleyballs, bought nets, and seen to the maintenance of the volleyball court itself. The Spike Rangers organized the seventh edition of the Let’s Dig It volleyball tournament on the 2nd and 3rd of May, 2025. The UI volleyball team competed, winning two games and losing the same number. In an interview with the UCJ after the competition, the captain lamented the lack of support from the sports council with things as little as jersey for players.
Finally, there may be arguments as to whether the students of the university should be allowed to use land belonging to the faculty of arts for their sporting activities. The fact remains that it was in use before, and if it is going to be taken away, the same way every student is responsible for the payment of the university’s sports levy of #2,200, the sports council is responsible for providing a suitable alternative to students who would like to continue playing the sports they played on the former pitch.
EXTERNAL COMPETITIONS
The University of Ibadan is a member of the Nigerian Universities Games Association (NUGA), the West African Universities Games (WAUG), the Federation of African Universities Sports (FASU), and the International University Sports Federation (FISU). Over the years, it has had its students represent it in these competitions, and as the results have remained consistently not good enough for the prestige of the university, another consistent report from these games is the lamentations of student-athletes representing the university at these games. As far back as 2019, in an interview with the UCJ, the 71st captain of the UI Pioneers, Agboola Boluwaji, who led the football team that represented the university in the 2019 Higher Institutions Football League (HIFL), encouraged the Sports Council to do better in terms of supporting its athletes. Fast forward to 2022, multiple university representatives at the NUGA qualifiers held at the Awo Stadium lamented non-payment of the allowance promised by the school management; others admitted that they were paid, but the payment was late. The UI contingent eventually went on to win 20 medals in that competition (2 gold, 6 silver, and 12 bronze medals). The gold medals came on the last day from the female chess category, and when the chess coach of the university, Dr. Ariyo Oluwaseun, gave his comments, he implored the Sports Council to try to provide a place where chess could be played in the university. In comparison, the University of Port Harcourt carted away 120 medals, while the University of Lagos won 86 medals. Moving forward to the 2024 FASU Games jointly hosted by Lagos State University (LASU) and the University of Lagos (UNILAG), the UI contingent won 12 medals (2 gold, 4 silver, and 6 bronze medals); both gold medals came from chess and taekwondo. Again, this result paled in comparison to the first runner-up, LASU, with 84 medals (28 gold medals), and the second runner-up, UNILAG, with 98 medals (25 gold medals). This year, the Federation of International Sports (FISU) Trials were held at the University of Jos from April 6th through to April 12th. The trials presented university athletes the opportunity to represent Nigeria at the Rhine-Ruhr World University Games in Germany, scheduled to begin on July 16th. The UI contingent was made up of ten athletes who represented the university across athletics, badminton, and swimming. Of the ten representatives, only Akiniran Oluwasemiloore from the Faculty of Education, who competed in the throws, qualified for the World University Games. Another athlete from the university, who prefers to remain anonymous, complained about the timing of the funding received. The contingent spent seven days in Jos, but allowance from the university was not received by the athletes until the fourth day. In their words, “We had already spent a lot of our money [before the allowance came]. I wonder how someone who didn’t have any money would have survived.”
FAILURES OF THE UNIVERSITY’S SPORTS COUNCIL
The last few years in inter-varsity sports competitions have shown that we are nowhere near the first, and we are definitely not the best. The University of Port Harcourt and the University of Lagos are giants in national inter-varsity sports, and the reasons are not far-fetched. The dedication to the investment in sports (athletes and sports infrastructure) by their respective sports councils and other stakeholders has borne fruit over the years. UNILAG’s sports complex is one of the most impressive in the country, and one may argue that the university did not directly fork out the money to develop the infrastructure. Still, they were able to secure sponsorships that developed their sports infrastructure and hosting rights for competitions, which translates to money to develop and maintain the current sports infrastructure. This is one of the ways the leadership of the University of Ibadan Sports Council has been failing over the years. Yes, the university may not have the funds to pump into the development of sports infrastructure, but there have not been considerable efforts on the part of the sports council to make the sporting landscape in the school attractive enough to attract sponsors to invest in sports infrastructure. This would put the university in a much better position to bid to host some inter-varsity competitions, which would then open the way for even more funding.
Another way the leadership of the sports council has been failing over the years is in terms of the welfare of the university’s representatives in these external competitions. Since time immemorial, students have consistently lamented the inadequate consideration given to their welfare when representing the university. They sometimes have to pay for things out of their pocket, and even when the university provides it, it often comes late. This sometimes discourages students from volunteering to represent the university.
As a result of these failings, the results from external competitions have been poor. The categories in which we often win (chess), we win not because of the university’s input, but despite the conditions of the school’s sports infrastructure. These athletes train by themselves or employ personal coaches.
In conclusion, while we prepare for the 27th edition of the Nigerian University Games Association (NUGA) games, which is scheduled to be held at the University of Jos from the 6th of November to the 16th of November, the athletes of the University of Ibadan have their sights set on the NUGA qualification games, which are scheduled to be held sometime in September. If these athletes are expected to perform better and win at the level that is expected of students of the prestigious University of Ibadan, the onus is on the leadership of the sports council, in line with their aim as stated on their website to provide the right conditions to nurture these talents to become the best they can be.