TURNING-POINT-Bola-Bolawole
As students resume tomorrow – hopefully! – for a new academic session at the Obafemi Awolowo University (formerly University of Ife), the authorities face the daunting task of a set-back of an academic calendar. While other institutions of higher learning are into the second semester and or rounding up the session; OAU is just about to begin! This is whopping; it is quite a mountain to climb. This misfortune has been a source of anguish and pains to a lot of stakeholders – students, parents, and alumni especially. Great Ife, as this citadel of learning is admirably addressed by all and sundry, has, in recent years, become a shadow of itself. And as they say, its glory days lay not in its present shenanigans nor anywhere in a future we can easily see but in its past. This is most unfortunate. As a parent and an alumnus, I am doubly whacked by Great Ife’s unfortunate turn of events.
OAU’s misfortune has been largely self-inflicted; this, in its numerous strikes and protests. We have had unending students’ protests over hikes in school fees; inadequate hostel and lecture facilities; poor power and water supply; clashes over dissolution of Students’ Union governments and or rustication of students union leaders; not to talk of strikes by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the intransigence of government which actually broke the backbone of school academic calendar nationwide. The recovery rate for the universities has not been easy, smooth, and even. At Ife, the pig-headedness of the immediate past authorities over new school fees and the students’ protests against it helped to compound an already bad situation. As if that was not enough, another shenanigan by the authorities over the selection process of a new Vice-Chancellor led to protests from unusual quarters, which practically …Read More
Source:: PM Newspaper
