I Would Have Loved to Have Everyone on Campus, These Are Difficult Times – UNILAG VC

By Daniel Kelechi

It is now almost two months since the University of Lagos (UNILAG) commenced a virtual semester for the 2024/2025 academic session due to hostel renovations being carried out by the institution. There have been several questions from students and parents regarding why students are being kept at home even after a fee increment.

Students are beginning to say that the school management does not care about their welfare and are only being cruel to them. To set the records straight, UNILAG Sun had an exclusive interview with the Vice Chancellor of UNILAG, Professor Folashade Ogunsola who offered some clarity on why students are being made to learn virtually from home.

Students have been complaining that the management doesn’t care about them due to the way hostels have been under renovation without any timeline as to when the renovation will be over. How do you react to that?

The students will not say that the management doesn’t care about them. If we don’t care, we won’t be renovating the hostels where they live. My belief is that you cannot talk about gentlemen and ladies when they live in terrible hostels. I’ve been in many of them and honestly, it’s appalling. We were doing repairs but it was always little patches and what you find is that within a few months of the students being back there, everything is destroyed again so we decided to do a total renovation of all of the hostels. We were hoping to do the renovation before the resumption of this semester but unfortunately, when you’re working with government money, you can’t plan, you do your part, then you wait for the government to give you the money.
So the money we were hoping would come in maybe about July just so that as we are finishing school, we start, didn’t come. But when it came, we knew we had to make a very quick decision because the spiral in inflation means that if you do not use that money now, it will be useless by next year.

So we had to make the decision that if we’re going to do all these hostels, we had better just spend that money now. It’s a tough decision but I always take the long view, not the short term view, because at the end of the day, I’m more interested in making sure that those hostels are done and there’s no time that we want to do it, that people will not be inconvenienced because there’s no time that the university is totally empty.

So if you don’t just empty it, you can’t do it. So, some of them are ready, some are not ready yet, and we’re talking with the contractors to try and make sure that they are ready as soon as possible.

About not giving a timeline, The reason I won’t give you a timeline is that if we were in absolute control of everything, I would have but when you build using government money, there is always a delay as the money comes in batches and at different stages of the building.

If we were in control and the money was here, I would tell you, I’ll finish in this amount of time, but I’m not using my IGR. I’m using government money, which means I can control myself, but I can’t control how the government will continue to disburse money. So the Nigerian factor always comes in. I would be loath to give a timeline because we can’t give one and fail to keep to it. Our hope is that by the first semester everything will be done. That’s the latest.

It’s not that we do not care, we would have loved to have it finished by December, but we know that’s not possible. Three of them are 95% finished, the others are in different stages, some are close to beginning. Now, when students say, the management doesn’t care about them, It’s because I care that I’m repairing the hostel, I don’t want them to come back into that dungeon. If I can’t sleep in a place, why would I ask you to do so? So it’s really about the students, but sometimes, it’s the prerogative of the students to be dissatisfied. I would have loved to have everyone on campus but these are difficult times. Sometimes you just have to make decisions because in the long run, it works. It does not mean that because it’s uncomfortable, somebody doesn’t care.

Why am I fixing the hostels? If I left the hostels and allowed you to move in, you would probably love me more. But when you enter the hostels, you start complaining saying, ‘look at the state of this hostel.’ Why are we doing it if it’s not for the students? I’m not staying there. And if I repair the hostel, nobody’s seeing it from anywhere, except those of you that will live inside it. Is it me? Is it the outside? So when people speak like that, then you’re not really thinking deep about this. You’re just thinking, ‘I’m not comfortable’.

Students are wondering why they have to pay for laboratories that they won’t use since they are having virtual classes. What do you have to say about this?

We are planning on how you will get the lab in a way that will be minimally disruptive or minimally expensive. If we say people should come from home, those who live very far and outside Lagos will complain. We are working on how you will get your lab on campus. It’s just that it won’t be the way it was before. It might be together so when you’re on campus, you’ll know that you’re in to do lab.

For more on the full interview, lookout for our convocation publication by January.