Bedspace sellers, buyers risk eviction from hostels — UNILAG VC

By Daniel Nnamani and Barakat Lawal

The vice chancellor of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Professor Folashade Ogunsola, has warned that students involved in the buying and selling of bedspaces will be evicted from hostels and barred from on-campus accommodation until graduation.

Ogunsola issued the warning during an interview with UNILAG Sun on Tuesday, December 30, 2025, saying that the university will no longer tolerate hostel racketeering.

She said any student found engaging in the illegal practice — whether as a seller or buyer — will be removed from the hostel and blacklisted.

“A lot of illegal market is run by students,” she said.

“Any student we catch selling bedspace will be thrown out. Whether you’ve paid or not, we’ll throw you out and blacklist you. No more accommodation on campus for you until you graduate.”

Ogunsola said that the university is against squatting because it often leads to overcrowding, pressure on facilities, and security concerns.

“The persistent overcrowding is a health hazard,” she said.

“Toilets meant for a certain number of people are being used by five or six times that number.

“There is also the possibility of crime. We don’t know who is living there. Sometimes, people who are not even university students might be there.”

The vice chancellor also addressed complaints about the delay in students moving into halls of residence, attributing the situation to a technical glitch on the students’ portal.

She explained that the university had planned for students to move into hostels at the start of the semester, but the arrangement was disrupted following a request by the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) for the harmonisation of all student fees.

According to her, the harmonisation process required departments and faculties to agree on uniform charges, which led to last-minute changes to the university’s computer programme.

“What we did then was to get departments and faculties to sit down and decide how much they charge,” she said.

“For it to go onto the portal, it meant somebody had to rewrite our computer programme close to resumption. They thought they had done it.

“But whenever you write a new computer programme, glitches can occur. It is only when people start to use it that you begin to notice them.

“When the pressure hit it, all sorts of things we didn’t anticipate started to show up.”

Ogunsola admitted that the university should have communicated the challenges earlier to manage students’ expectations.

“We should have said something earlier,” she said.

“We also did not appreciate how much we delayed. We thought we would make it.”

She added that the delay in the admission of freshers was another factor that affected hostel allocation, noting that changes in the admission timeline compounded the problem.

“The second thing that happened was the admissions for freshers, which was supposed to end at a certain time, was extended,” she said. 

“And we had targeted that. Then, JAMB increased the delay, and all these were close to our resumption date.”

For more on our interview with the VC, get the convocation edition of UNILAG Sun in January 2026