This article is the second in a four-part series highlighting the pitfalls in the University of Ibadan’s Students’ political scene. Read the first part here.
There is a political crisis within the University of Ibadan student body. Every year, we talk about apathy and religiously review records of officeholders in contrast with the manifold manifestos that make the rounds. We hold Press Nights, interview candidates for pre-election articles, and publish stories about the activities of our respective legislative councils and the actions of the executives who lead our associations. Often, we have to investigate and lay bare to the world the errors and horrors many move on from in a matter of days. These have become routine to the point where many have grown apathetic. It’s understandable. It’s almost unstoppable. But there is a crisis on ground. It mustn’t be overlooked any further. Wont as we are to march on, it is pertinent that this be addressed.
Before we delve into this situation, it’s important to clarify that this writer has no intention of being alarmist. Elections have already occurred in the soon-to-be-highlighted student bodies, so the clock can’t be turned. However, identifying these gaps, means we can start filling now, or at least identify backups for when it goes to Hades.
The Manifesto Singularity
As budding campus journalists (CJs) attending Press Nights for the first time, we observed how strikingly similar manifestos were. At the Hall level, it was mostly renovations, Hall Week, welfare, academic support – sometimes, inter-floor/inter-block sports, sponsorship, and alumni relations. The same was obtainable at the departmental and faculty levels with tutorials, summits/seminars, skill acquisition, academic repositories/book drives, sports days, and of course, sponsorship and alumni relations. It’s still the same today. We can do nothing without our alumni and sponsorship/donations drive Celebration weeks. The similarity was easily understood to be born of our shared needs, especially in the post-COVID wake when apathy attained a new peak, and focus – already shifted – was expended even more on socials. Voters wanted the bare minimum. Campus journalists, unresigned to the same expectation, demanded improvements. In all this, one could still expect three to four manifestos to have fresh ideas. Two of those four would be somewhat feasible. Of their own accord, details of these plans would be provided before any eliciting by questioning. This was before the feasibility and knowledge of office workings were questioned. And even when aspirants would lie and fail to fulfil the plans, considerable preparation went into the presentation of manifestos – itself a problematic tradition.
The script nosedived in the bygone election season. Our student body achieved a ‘manifesto singularity’, so to speak. It wasn’t so much that these plans were similar, as it was that a lack of consideration went into application across the board. For ease of comparison, let’s consider the manifestos from five faculties; Education – (Nigerian Universities Education Students’ Association), the Social Sciences (Faculty of the Social Sciences Students’ Association), Law (Law Students’ Society), Arts (Association of Faculty of Arts Students), and Science (Faculty of Science Students’ Association). The table below shows the plans that recured the most in manifestos for Executive positions in all five.
With a plan like ‘Feedback Mechanisms’, the rationale is quite clear; members of these bodies need to be able to communicate their concerns, suggestions, displeasure, and everything else to the Executive Council, and DMs or tags on general groups aren’t sufficient. However, rather than a tailored approach based on the Association’s structure, their [aspirants’] solution to this – for the most part – was slapping on a Google Form link and calling it a day. It’s why at the AFAS Press Night, AFAS Press CJs could call out how, in the current session, these forms, combined with in-person visits hadn’t been sufficient. Or in the case of the LSS, how the Anonymous form was subject to external suggestions, and was needed more frequently, rather than as an end-of-semester/session roundup. In both instances, the manifestos and subsequent questioning exposed a failure to cater to previous failures or the structure of activities within the associations.
The Freshers/Faculty Desk and Mentorship Program also fall into this bracket. In FASSA, the Mentorship program was attempted but wasn’t executed as it should. Yet, when suggested again, save for the lone Presidential candidate, it was equal measure guesswork and ‘filling up the paper’. The Help Desks were generally built on the premise of the replicability of the success of the UI SU’s Fresher’s Help Desk. Factors like incentives, timing, burden of mentorship (some suggested a combination), performance evaluation and monitoring, weren’t considered in detail. PRO Aspirants wanted to revitalise WhatsApp TVs without assessing the TVs’ current state like in FATSSA, prompting a barrage of questioning that concurrently showed how little said aspirant – now elected – had in stock for other social media. Skill acquisition programs, while admirable, failed to consider the cost of getting trainers and the duration required for efficient acquisition. Aspirants in NUESA and AFAS suggested that certain skills could be learnt online, against better judgement.
Committees were another recurrent feature. This tendency to throw every issue without an existent solution to a committee puzzled attendees at more than one Press Night. Welfare was split among so many committees, that aspirants had to be reminded of the norm and how their proposed committees differed from constitutional provisions. In trying to bring multiple heads and hands, some aspirants summarily excluded themselves from operations, ceding headship and management of those committees to volunteers. If you think there’s no cause for alarm, think of the many dysfunctional committees that pervade our bodies. Afterwards, consider just how many members serve and how many are glorified certificate collectors. Circling back to welfare, listening to this new set of student leaders would have you believe that exam/session packages and mental health awareness rank highest on the list of welfare needs of the student body (In some instances, like NUESA’s, delayed packages are recurrent and a valid cause for concern). There was a consistent oversight of school fees and other forms of financial welfare – some of which these bodies successfully sought in the last session. Another session begins in less than 45 days. Maybe, just maybe, up close and personal confrontations with reality will be to our advantage.
A Tradition of Errors
Theories abound on the reason for this malady of dumbed-down, inadequate plans all over campus. A favourite is that aspirants do not want to promise and fail. (Enough of this aspirant talk. These are our leaders now). As two now-elected Executives, in the Departments of Linguistics and Archeology and Anthropology, respectively, put it, they’ve watched predecessors promise lofty plans without delivering on those, and intend to avoid that pitfall. It’s an insulting excuse – the rational step shouldn’t be avoiding innovation altogether but identifying loopholes and improving on them. But when their vision is limited to tradition, who can we blame but leaders past who have made unfulfilled manifestos the norm? I implore you to go through various Local Press Organisations’ (LPOs) executive reviews when chanced. It’s a hall thing (Indy Press, Queens Press, Mellanby Press etc. ). It’s a faculty thing (LPOs in those above five). It’s even a departmental thing (ASSESSA Press, LINSA Press, NASELS Press etc.). More and more executives receive service plaques, and one more feather in their CV, having bamboozled their way through office. There are special ones among the lot who take it further by occupying multiple offices as students while upholding the tradition of unaccountability at every point.
Lest we be misinterpreted, this is not a demand that manifestos be 100% fulfilled. Situations arise that make this impossible. As many a UI student politician is wont to say, “Manifestos don’t read problems”. Challenges often emerge beyond plans and also constitutional provisions. The school fees hike last session is a good example of such. Also, positive interventions often render plans irrelevant, especially with alumni benevolence. However, there’s a world of difference between failing to deliver on a few items and ignoring one’s manifesto altogether. Our leaders are doing the latter.
Another well-established theory is that positive political mentorship isn’t taking place. The blind mentor the blind here. At Press Nights, then aspirants, now elected executives, repeatedly relayed information from predecessors that was incomplete and inaccurate. Two offices where this surfaced most frequently were those of the General and Assistant General Secretaries. A worrying number were unaware of the state of their Secretariats or record keeping despite speaking with the outgoing officeholders. Student leaders failed to communicate the challenges of their offices appropriately, creating the illusion of perfection. You know the result of that already. It’s why the sole Financial Secretary aspirant in LINSA (Linguistics Students’ Association) would tell campus journalists that her predecessor didn’t indicate any manifesto-worthy worries, but later admit to a need for an improved dues receipt and collection system. No one is saying there should be godfatherism. However, good mentorship is key. You don’t have to endorse candidates or reveal tips to win elections. But you should speak to aspirants – especially lone aspirants – acclimatising them with all that concerns the office so they are in a much better place, even beyond Press Nights. The tenure won’t read Press Night results, after all.
Speaking of godfatherism, it’s ironic how intellectual UItes are afraid to speak on the performance of their predecessors. A simple “ Rate/Critique the outgoing Vice President’s performance” becomes a game of hot potato. Aspirants mostly declined to speak on this at Press Nights and when they did, responses were either vague or heapings of praise with no blemish. Whether out of fear of losing the support of predecessors and their follower base – political self-preservation – or not, it’s a sign of declining fortunes in honest leadership.
Two more subjects, before we close this section on tradition. First, there is a gross overlap of duties in student bodies, particularly for Social and Welfare activities. Association Legislative Councils have failed to review and amend constitutions, resulting in redundant offices, in some instances, and over-burdened roles for others. Role ambiguity in organising the activities of End-of-Tenure Weeks also results in conflicts and dereliction of duties, such that the blame for poor execution is passed around and no one gets held accountable. Some Associations need separate Academic Directors rather than overworking General Secretaries and VPs. And there has never been a better time to collapse certain offices into a Special Duties Officer role. Of course, questioning tradition is against the law so everyone just moves about their day, while yet another Rt. Hon. is applauded for leading a ‘forward-thinking, proactive’ FLC or Senate.
The final subject of this section could be a bright spot if fortunes are reversed. It concerns the poor level of research that went into the fresh ideas in manifestos. A referral to the manifestos and – in some cases – interviews of aspirants in the earlier mentioned five faculties would reveal an impressive number of new plans. However, the one defining feature of most of these plans was a lack of consideration for ‘how’ the plans would be brought to reality. Take the LSS, for example, where the now-elected President proposed an ushering agency but based the proposed revenue and structure on a Lagos model. Publications (Nations’ Builder Magazine – NUESA PRO 1, Lord Justice Journal – LSS President 2), Digital innovations (Website revamp – FATSSA President 2, YouTube learning – LSS President 1 and 3, Digital receipt – FASA Gen. Sec), and programs (Sweat The Stress – AFAS Sports Director 1, Super Cup – NUESA Sports Director 1, Early Research Development Initiative – FASSA VP), are a number of the brilliant initiatives presented with more of a ‘to-be-figured out’ approach than anything else. A cop-out for many; a way to show innovation and well-meaning to members, rooted in the idea that most of the electorate care not about the plans but class, hall, and departmental alliances, and that even less care about accountability during the tenure. We’re ‘Na Our Guy’-ing ourselves to the point of haemorrhage.
Now, let’s talk about the Press.
Dion
Odin
Editor’s Note: Readers should note that the opinions of this writer, while of proper journalistic standard, are not equal to the position of the UIMSA Press.