Education Rights Campaign (ERC)

ERC SUPPORTS UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN STUDENTS’ PROTEST

We demand opening of the University not later than 9 May 2012

All the demands of students should be met by the management

The Education Rights Campaign strongly supports the protest embarked upon by students of the University of Ibadan (UI) over the non-availability of water and electricity supply in the university campus. We condemn the unwarranted and undemocratic closure of the University for two weeks by the management starting from Tuesday 24 April 2012.

This to us is an irresponsible measure always taken by university managements across the country to cover up the real issues behind students protests and also to punish students by unnecessarily disrupting the academic calendar.

We therefore call for reopening of the University not later than Wednesday 9 May 2012 when the two-week break imposed by the University management would elapse.

U.I students had marched out in their hundreds on Monday 23 April 2012 and Tuesday 24 April 2012 to demonstrate against a three-day water and power outage witnessed on campus without any meaningful intervention by the University Management to correct the situation.

We wish to express our dissatisfaction with the poor living condition of students of Nigerian premier university. This ignoble situation clearly underlines what obtains in many other tertiary institutions in the country where students are made to live and study under appalling conditions. Students are denied access to decent hostel facilities.

In campuses where hostels are available, water and power supply are inadequate with students having to trek distances to fetch water and live in the dark for weeks. Furthermore, students are faced with the challenges of ill-equipped libraries and laboratories, congested classrooms, high student-teacher ratio among others.

The aforementioned are symptoms of an underfunded education system and that is why we have, over the years, been calling on government at all levels to increase the budgetary allocation to education up to 26% UNESCO recommendation. However, even the little funds made available to education are often misappropriated by administrators not in schools but also at the ministry, department and agency (MDA) as a result of lack of democratic running in the sector. This is why we have also been calling for the setting up of a budget monitoring committee in all campuses with the involvement of elected representatives of education workers and students to hold education administrators accountable.

The protest action embarked upon by the students is a step in the right direction. We commend the courage of the students and we urge the University Management and all other authorities concerned to immediately restore water and electricity supply to the campus. This struggle must however be linked with a national campaign for the provision of adequate infrastructural facilities on campuses across the country.

In the light of the above, we wish to make the following demands:

1. Reopening of the campus for resumption of academic activities not later than Wednesday 9 May 2012

2. Immediate provision of adequate water and electricity supply

3. None of those who participated in the protest should be victimized. We say no to any invitation to Student Disciplinary Panels.

4. Public education is the only alternative available for working class and lower middle class youths. Therefore, the government must fund public tertiary institutions adequately starting from immediately allocating 26% of annual budget to public education and up to providing free education at all levels.

2 May 2012

Hassan Taiwo Soweto

National Coordinator

08099529537

E-mail: [email protected]