By Favour Tisan Aluwong
The University of Maiduguri is one of the most prominent and prestigious universities in Nigeria. It was established in the year 1975. The University under the leadership of Professor Aliyu Shugaba, has faced a lot of challenges in the management of the University and this has resulted to some certain failures in the system. There are downgrades from the financial status and report of the school, up to the poor hostel maintenance and management.
The school, been one of the best in the country, doesn’t deserve to be in a damaged system as it is now, all due to the the neglect of the government on the funding and revitalisation of the University. The University is at a very damaged point that the hostel which is for its students accomodation has been in a very poor state. The campus hostels for both male and female students ought to be declared in a “State of Emergency”. All because the hostel has very poor and bad facilities which are not functioning. In the hostel, one could see that there are broken bunks(some rooms tend to have no bunks at all, broken or no lockers available in rooms, there are no running taps in the toilets or bathroom and even outside at the hostel premises. There is only one tap available and this results to water scarcity for the students on campus.
There are also issues of lack of drainages for the smooth movement of spilled water and there is also an issue of already filled up and broken soak aways at the hostel vicinities. The students have pleaded with the University Management in order to get the intervention of the government on the betterment of the hostels on campus.
Students have decried the bad management and the lack of cleaning of the environs around the hostels as for a number of days the Hostel cleaning services have been absent from work and then there is the issue of the restrooms, as the toilet dirtiness is at a high risk for female students especially in terms of getting infected with toilet infections due to the unkempt situation of toilets in the hostels.
There are lamentations on the bad running of the school management when it comes to hostels situation. It’s been said that the hostel has been blackout for some days without electricity and also decried on how the hostel management is been reluctant on the emptying of the soakaways as it is already filled up and overflowing around the environment and it results to a very discomforting atmosphere for inhalation and breeding of mosquitoes.
There’s also the condemnation of the poor sanity of the hostel environment. The hostel cleaners are not been paid properly and as they have also not been paid for some months now. Even after all this, there is no incentives for the encouragement of the cleaning staff and without this things happening they are no longer committed to their work anymore.
I will like to call out on the Federal Government to come to the aid of the University of Maiduguri and also to other universities at large. They should improve the funding of the universities, they should also approve the project on the building of more of hostels on campus so as to reduce the congestion of students in rooms and to create a more better condusive environment of learning. And then, I will like to call on to the University Management to look at the hostels poor management and improve them to a more satisfactory rate. They should also improve on the supervision of the hostel maintenance as so as to result to an improved area of learning and accommodation for her students.
Favour Tisan Aluwong, Department of Mass Communication, University of Maiduguri.
