ON HALLS OF RESIDENCE SECURITY BREACHES: THE BUSINESS OF STAKEHOLDING

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”—Henry David Thoreau

It is no longer news that the university campus has in recent time been under the wings of security breaches, particularly in Obafemi Awolowo Hall on July 11 and Abdusalami Abubakar Hall on August 12. The management has however promised all stakeholders that it would embark on “a comprehensive review, reinforcement and restructuring of security architecture, landscape, facilities and services on campus.” Take note of the three R’s. Although, as students, we should not be bothered by these distracting issues, we have to inevitably take responsibility for security. Having built our castles in the air by seeking and gaining admission to the university, we have to put the foundations under them, as key stakeholders. Our business as stakeholders involves acquiring right information, getting security-conscious and complying with security measures that will be taken by the school management.

In desperate times such as these, we have to constantly be in the know than ever before. Lack of information is analogous to death. We have to get informed about what is happening around us, in our hostels and faculties. Imagine the plight of any student suddenly accosted by security personnel while walking during a partial curfew because s/he does not know there was a curfew.

As students in this business of stakeholding, we cannot seriously afford to be security unconscious. On July 11, Awo Hall came under deadly attack as men of the underworld arrived, attacked and robbed many Awoites of their phones, laptops and other gadgets. On August 3, occupants of room C12, C13 and C14 were robbed again by armed men. Before dawn on August 12, the security personnel in Abdusalami Abubakar Hall was overpowered and tied up by cutlass-and-machete-wielding individuals who began to collect gadgets and money on the female block afterwards before injuring two male occupants. Knowing full well that the three R’s may not recompense these useful tools, keep your gadget and other property well every time and everywhere.

Part of being security conscious, there is also an urgent need to have our means of identification with us everywhere we go. In the world of Athol Fugard’s play Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, Bansi died because he had no ID card. Life in that story was the content of your ID card. The current situation of insecurity impels us to make it a habit to have the school ID card, library card or other form of identification with us.

The management has promised to salvage the situation on ground. It has also requested compliance on our parts. Let us do well to comply with security measures like curfews. Let us constructively channel our complaints and criticism of the management’s steps. Therefore, it is all hands on deck. Each of us has a role to play in the ongoing war against insecurity.

Of all mistakes, indifference or lack of concern for the state of security on campus is the most dangerous. Never harbour the thought or hazard the notion that it cannot happen to you. There is absolutely no justification for such false, delusive and immature thinking. It is imperative that we become more mindful of our status as stakeholders, by being security and identity conscious as well as critically compliant with security measures taken by the management.

It behooves us all, as Henry David Thoreau asserts above. The last line of the university anthem reads: “For a mind that knows is a mind that is free.” William Shakespeare also quipped that it is the mind that makes the body rich. In summary, the insecure mind can neither know freedom nor enrich the body.