“We suffered like animals” – Germany-based Nigerian youth recalls horrible UNILAG hostel life
Taiwo Ayodeji wrote the following…
Look at the image (scroll down for the photo): That is how we lived. Like animals.
We lived under animal-like conditions in my days at Unilag. We had the so-called ’10-man rooms’, ’12-man rooms’ and other many-man rooms in the hostels. The toilets, especially in my 1st year at El-Kanemi Hall were an eyesore. It was not uncommon for some students to shit inside buckets and place them in the toilet. Such students earned the early morning curses of the cleaning women.
Almost every room had squatters; in 500 Level, I was in a 6-man room but with 10 people. I had two squatters who were on and off. The rooms were really dirty, stuffy and sickness-inducing. I wonder how we survived. No privacy, no cleanliness. The only thing we had were beds. Imagine sleeping in the same room with buckets and bathroom slippers whose bottoms had sat on the floors of the disease-filled toilets. Imagine using a mattress that has been used for over 5 years by different kinds of people without disinfection. Imagine living in a room with so many people and little ventilation. We didn’t live; we merely existed.
Here in Munich, students live together in student union owned apartments. Each student has a room to themselves. The rooms have beds and furniture. Toilets, even when shared are in good condition. Everything is as should be. But in Nigeria, the hostels are in a state of chaos and we seem to have adjusted to such manner of life
