UISU Press Conference and Reflections on Student Leadership

Jolaade Ifeoluwayimika

On the 14th of January, 2024, UI SU held a Press conference at the SRC Chamber. This Press conference may be referred to as one of its kind in years now. Held seemingly with the intent to relate certain issues to the public through the pen of the press, the conference turned out to be a lens at hand—which, deductively, is a helpful tool in understanding the crop and kind of leadership currently steering the affairs of the Union.

First, it is necessary to state that the conference was fundamentally flawed, being what it was tagged. It was of its first kind, a Press conference with no Press kit available for the Campus Journalists in attendance. A Press kit would mean either a hardcopy A4 paperwork or preferably soft copies of a statement the leadership would like to make public, in it would be a composition of the Union’s progress report and stance. Although the “conference” was dubbed an avenue to answer the questions possibly raised, insufficient answers and blurry expectations were the major highlights of that event. With some questions haphazardly answered, the Students’ Union really is yet to prove worthy of the position vested to their persons.

Student leaders are barely better than the Nigerian politicians who pledge their loyalty to the citizens but end up neglecting them. The leaders are vested with the responsibility to serve, portray and protect the interest of the students. But with the Union’s responses characterised by randomness, especially when upfront questions were asked regarding late fee sanction payment, studio levy, technology fee, utility levy, and even down to discriminatory accommodation fee, the coming into limelight of student leaders must be subjected to critical evaluation.

While vying for the leadership of the Union, there is no doubt that all the eight members comprising the Students’ Union Executive Council made vows of representation. Despite riding into Kunle Adepeju with a pledge to reinvigorate unionism by making it strong, nothing close to the promise has been the reality. More than getting to know the current leadership principles, their inestimable excuses, arguably baseless and unjustifiable, have been more strikingly popular. Claiming to be trying their best, but how come their efforts are bringing little, or rather, no worthwhile changes?

And what do the aspiring students say? They say they want to uphold the legacy that the present administration has been building. What legacy? One may ask. This becomes an insight into what the next administration will be. It is depressing that the Union is now turning into a political office where political business takes place. Only a few people truly know what exactly the Union stands for. This is because there is no sensitisation of the students; a Press member proposed this motion during the “conference”, but the UISU Vice President, Nafisat Ogunsesan, evaded the question, redirecting the same question to the Pressman.

There is no doubt that the Students’ Union is a desirable institution at the University of Ibadan. Its existence, however, can only be modelled after the ideal and moral objectives it was set after. While the Students’ Union leadership led by Samuel Samson Tobiloba did spell the disbursement of a 1.5 million naira fund to indigent students, as an achievement at the Congress, that act of charity, seemingly good, is however not a primary objective and principle of the Students’ Union. Until recently, the Students’ Union was not “a bursary for few students’ movement”. It was in fact an “education for all” army of students.

The danger of ignorance in an information age will be consequential. The aftermath of being arrogantly unknowledgeable will be damning. This is an era where documentation is the way of life; unlike yesteryears in the history of our Union, which we cannot detail accurately, the current generation of students as participants, as well as student leaders, are joint authors in the ineradicable pages of history. For whatever it would have been worth, the Samuel Samson Tobiloba-led administration, other than the bursary project, did not champion the course of students’ disinterest in the fetching list of fees billed to them. Restating this solemn fact in the face of an attempt at a Press conference of near-sighted commentaries about what should be important discourses is a moral responsibility.