NEW SCORES, NEW WINNERS AS TLDS HOLDS EMERGENCY SENATE SITTING

By Tijani AbdulKabeer

The Literary and Debating Society, University of Ibadan has, in an emergency senate meeting addressed the issues surrounding the scores for the first round of the Jaw War competition. The emergency meeting which was held at the Student Affairs Conference room had in attendance the Chief Judge of the competition, Dr. Demola Lewis, and all senators of each constituency.

It was at this sitting that the TLDS President, Ayeni Otito-Jesu addressed the disparities surrounding the announced scores for the first round tournament. He also admited that there was an error in the computation of results manually after the presentation.

Ayeni further noted that owning to the complaints and the decision of some halls to pull out of the competition, the results were recalculated with the Chief Judges both manually and the use of excel and some corrections had been made to the scores announced previously.

AWO 79.33 KUTI 79.663%
ZIK 73% BELLO 75.33%
TEDDER 72.66% MELLANBY 70%
ABH 73.5% INDY 70.5%
IDIA: 71% QUEENS 70.33%

Recall that Bello Hall, earlier on Thursday announced their decision to pull out of the competition due to the inconsistency observed in the results with more halls also threatening to pull out.

Speaking on the withdrawal of Bello Hall from the tournament, the general, Moses Olanrewaju explained that the hall felt cheated and with the level of preparation for the competition, they were certain that they would win.

Moses explained that the representatives of the hall had a super performance during their presentation adding that also considering the comment of the Chief Judges before the announcement of the result about their opponent’s poor research display in their speeches, they were still declared a winner.

More so, the Mellanby Hall Literary and debating society president, Murewa Orebela while justifying the decision of the hall to also pull out from the tournament, explained that their representatives had a brilliant presentation but were surprised by the results being announced.

He noted that their opponent from the Lord Tedder Hall could not even hit any of their points accurately adding that another concern they had was with the fact-checking of the facts presented by their speakers. He buttressed this by saying they could present their sources if granted by the leadership of the society.

Reacting to this development, largely all the senators raised concerns about the public address system that was utilized during the presentation. It was noted as one of the major reasons the audience could not flow with the speeches being presented.

Meanwhile, some senators also reacted to the part of the TLDs constitution that does not make provision for appealing of results and appealed to the leadership of the society to have that part of the Constitution altered to reflect amendment.

The Chief Judges admonishes the senators to uphold the culture of the best standard in their activities. He noted that they need to abolish the thought that they are doing the University good by participating in Jaw War and further warned that the University management might decide to cancel the tournament if some flaws were being noticed.

Speaking on a final note, Ayeni Otito-Jesu also implored the senators to desist from any act that would affect the integrity of the tournament. He noted that in calling the attention of the society to errors noticed in results they should be done politely rather than resolving to pull out in the middle of the tournament.

Ayeni made available the score sheets of each constituency present and gave a strict warning to only check and not take pictures of them.