Rotimi Akinola: High time UNILAG management stopped acting like kids
Okay, let’s face it. University of Lagos students are very immature.
One of them, Femi Adeyeye, wears the folly of youth like a garment. It’s absolute stupidity to call your lecturers “a conglomerate of ignorami”. Adeyeye is a very stupid boy.
What is wrong with students not having water to wash silk and skin? What is wrong with them sleeping in darkness while their mates in Ohio are treated like humans?
If your parents are broke, will you protest against them?
UNILAG students were suffering and, instead of enduring it like adults should, they protested. Like children, they got several highs jumping up and down on campus flinging aluta all over the place.
Some of them even went on social media to insult school leaders.
They displayed how irresponsible children could be. Nothing odd about that. After all, children will be children.
What came as a shock was seeing supposed adults joining in the tantrum.
Last April, instead of addressing peaceful demonstrators, the management called in armed police to bully students.
Instead of talking with student leaders, UNILAG sent an official to debate “children” on live TV. What a shame.
We’re not talking about people who can’t recall whether or not they have secondary school certificates. We’re talking about professors. Problem-solvers.
But lacking the balls to act like colleagues in Ohio, they resorted to force when crisis called. These guys are professors and they couldn’t initiate, execute and sustain conversations with students. Epic fail!
It’s sad that almost a year after that protest, UNILAG still haven’t solved the problems over which students demonstrated.
I don’t think UNILAG Senate can deliver the level of welfare you get oversees. I, however, believe a leadership that cannot communicate with its people without the use of arrests, intimidation and victimisation is a crude one. And crudeness befits kids, not adults.
On March 6, students will again protest against the school management’s continued immaturity at handling this matter. Let’s hope the VC and his Senate act like grownups this time.
Akinola’s column features on Newsroom every Thursday.
