Students’ accommodation blues

Squatting is common in most higher institutions. It is caused mostly by the inability of the school management to provide adequate halls of residence for students. Other factors include high cost of accommodation and a deliberate circumvention of bed spaces allocation rules by students.

The practice prevails at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, Osun State. Whenever an academic session begins, students are worried over accommodation. Most times, there are arguments between the hostel managers and prospective occupants of the halls of residence. Students believe that bed spaces available in OAU’s hostels can only accommodate 30 per cent of the students’ population.
A few weeks ago, the university began a fresh academic session; but, many of the returning students will not be accommodated. The bed spaces were allocated to some students, including freshers, the Deputy Dean, Students’ Affairs Unit, Dr Yinka Adesina said in an interview with CAMPUSLIFE.
Majority will have to reside off-campus, where they will contend with irregular power supply and insecurity. Some students have resorted to squatting.
Dr Adesina said the bed spaces were allocated on first-come-first-serve basis.
“Man must survive,” some squatters chorused when CAMPUSLIFE visited the allocation office.
According to the statistics released by Dr Adesina, 3,417 which is the number of bed spaces in Fajuyi, Moremi, Awolowo, Education Trust Fund, Akintola and Alumni are reserved for 5,241 final year students.
In an online interview with our correspondent, Dr Adesina said OAU could not accommodate all freshers, who are 5,400. He said the bed spaces in the school were less than 9,600, which are not enough to accommodate all its students.
“Yet, we will still accommodate other categories of students. The freshmen have been told that bed spaces allocation are on first-come-first-serve basis,” Dr Adesina said.
Some of the final year students, who wanted privacy and convenience, paid higher to rent apartments in the university’s host community. The lucky ones said they would not accommodate squatters.
In Awolowo and Fajuyi halls, legal occupants dare not report squatters, who always create spaces for their hosts. Here, squatters have the ‘right’ to sleep on the legal occupants’ bed spaces.
They use their hosts’ materials such as buckets, slippers, towels, pots and spoons without taking excuse.
However, this is not the case in Angola and Mozambique halls, where the freshers are accommodated. Squatting is not rampant in these halls.
Dolapo Akanni, a 200-Level student, who resided in Mozambique Hall in her first year, said: “I did not have squatters to stay with me in my 100-Level days, although I wish I had one because I felt the pain most of them go through.”
With no room for her in the current session, Dolapo said: “I will rather take to balloting rather than to squat. If balloting did not work, I will have to resign to fate.”
In OAU, illegal occupants know themselves and have a club. They can even invite their squat-mate to join them illegally.
“I started to squat from my first year on campus. In fact, I slept in the common room for some weeks before I got hooked with a colleague. It was like this till my penultimate year that a senior colleague gave me his bed space free of charge. This was when I could say I had a bed space to myself,” Moses Oluwanifise, president of English Department said.
A 100-Level female student, who preferred anonymity, told CAMPUSLIFE: “The situation on campus is so bad that even, freshers do not have bed spaces to themselves. I do not have issues with squatting because life is meant to be enjoyed by all. Who knows, I might have been in their shoes.”
Jamiu Adewole, 400-Level English, said: “I stayed in the freshers’ hall in my part one. I had a squatter that could not get accommodation because he resumed late. In my 200-Level days, I bought a bed space from a senior colleague, but in my 300-Level, I joined the squatters’ club. It takes me nothing to squat someone, so far the person lives a normal human life. Besides, life does not end here; we can still meet in future.”
It is an offence in the university to squat or be squatted. Buying many bed spaces in order to re-sell at exorbitant price is also a crime. To deter students, management punished some students, who engaged in selling bed spaces at exorbitant price.
But will the punishment deter students from squatting or being squatted?

OLUWAFEMI OGUNJOBI (400-Level Language Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife)