THE DEATH OF ABIODUN: ONE DEATH, TOO MANY!

EDUCATION RIGHTS  CAMPAIGN, ERC,  OAU BRANCH

THE DEATH OF ABIODUN: ONE DEATH, TOO MANY!

Abiodun's death is a clear indication of the total failure of the Nigerian government and its stooges in administration of tertiary institutions.

Again, we condemn the notoriously implemented accommodation policy; it has more agonies in stock!

The Education Rights Campaign (ERC) commiserates with the family of Abiodun Babatola who met his untimely death in the hands of cruel armed robbers. We wish that they have the fortitude to bear the irreparable loss. We consider the death of Abiodun as a tragic loss that is not only a loss to the family of the deceased,  but the university community and Nigerian students.
We cannot but state that the death of Abiodun was an avoidable one but due to administrative recklessness and insensitivity. The events surrounding the death (before and after) can be traced back to our previous agitations on the need to ensure adequate security and welfare of students. Obviously, this is not the first death from such a case. Indeed, students and the Nigerian masses have been the victims of a failed education system, health sector and by large, a failed society.

Again, The Education Rights Campaign (ERC) sternly condemns the vicious accommodation policy that was implemented by the Ogunbodede-led administration without consideration for students' comfort but profit for private hostel owners, who the OAU authorities are in cohort with.
The university authorities had sent at thousands of students out of campus hostels under the guise of decongesting the hostels. But the management refused to provide safe and sustainable alternative to students other than asking them to seek accommodation outside the university campus. Most of the accommodation facilities available outside the campus lack basic facilities including adequate security necessary for conducive learning. Even the transport facilities are under serious pressure as more than seventy percent of students now live outside campus as against less than fifty percent who previously live outside campus.
The management made no effort to build new hostels on campus, yet the management had enough money to fund the ostentatious lifestyles of top management officials. One of the reasons for management sending students outside the campus is to behead the agitation for the unbanning of student union which has been illegally and unconstitutionally suspended for more than two years, and for better welfare conditions.
This policy has put many students under serious pressure, and has created a sense of insecurity, as many students now live in fear of men of the underworld, who see students as soft and lucrative targets. That the university authorities could not assure or provide adequate security for students they sent to insecure environment, shows high level of irresponsibility, to say the least.
  Apparently, the university management is dancing to the tune of the Government that has consciously refused to fund the education sector while others sectors are left in ruin. The sad incidence is not an unexpected event to us, as we have raised the dangers and insecurities that abounds in off-campus residences in reaction to the arbitrary accommodation policy implemented by the Ogunbodede-led administration. This has been confirmed by many sad occurrences raging from, theft,assault, extortion, community clashed, rape to natural disaster. We have always maintained that the only way to resolve the accommodation crisis is for the University management to construct more hostels on campus and renovate the existing ones. Residence on campus offers students the opportunity to collectively, as we have always done, defend themselves, especially through the Students' union. Painfully, the same University management that forced students out of campus, first deprived them of the tool (students' union) to defend themselves. This is callousness! How many more lives would be sacrificed to their 'God of profit'?
It is important to note that Abiodun's death also exposes the terrible state of the health sector, where many hospitals are left with no quality equipments and short of staff and many Health centres have been reduced to 'gossiping centre' out of poor attention to the health sector. This is why the Nigerian government, as much as Ogunbodede, is culpable in the murder of Abiodun. Painfully, a nation that needs to urgently produce medical staffs to fill the vacuum of insufficient staffs and those that have flee the ugly situation for greener pasture is consciously preventing potential health workers from studying through imposition of outrageous fees.

For us, the Education Rights Campaign,  we consider Abiodun's murder as a joint murder by the armed robbers,  OAU authorities and the Government.
The ERC calls on students to rise in defence of their living and learning conditions. The best way to mourn Abiodun is by fighting against the terrible factors that led to his death!

Signed:
Dunnex Samuel,
Ag. Cordinator

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