Alaran Muslihudeen Mayowa is dead. He died in the common room of Independence Hall, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria while watching the UEFA Champions League match between Barcelona and Bayern Munich on Wednesday 6th June, 2015. May Mayowa’s soul continue to rest in perfect peace. Before Mayowa’s demise, he was a 200 level student of the Department of Health Education and Human Kinetics, Faculty of Education and Mayowa was coasting to academic victory with his 6.3 Cumulative Grade Point Average standing out of the possible 7 points. The conditions allegedly leading to Mayowa’s death is sad; also disheartening is the reaction of students who protested the death of their colleague.
Mayowa reportedly slumped and died, possibly from exhaustion since there was a crowd of football lovers in the common room. Satellite television technology has made football easily accessible and it is easier to find a needle in a hay sack than to find a young man who does not love the round leather game. His parents and relatives will be distraught to hear of what led to his death even as one wishes them the fortitude to bear the loss. Given Mayowa’s department, it is harmless to conclude that the young man was simply trying to garner practical knowledge from the screen that he will find handy for later work life. According to reports, his death will have been avoided if the staff on duty at Jaja Clinic, the university’s primary health care centre for staff and students had responded in good time when he was brought in. Instead, the students allege that they insisted on seeing the young man’s hospital identity card before attending to him. Jaja has a reputation that makes it difficult to deny this allegation given this writer’s experiences on two different occasions in company of patients to the health facility. In the 21st century, this approach at health care is at best anachronistic especially in an academic environment where research papers on technology and health sciences are readily being churned out. I’ll return to this issue shortly.
The protest by the students of the university is a predictable one by anyone who is close to any ivory tower or is a student of university administration. The narrative of Professor Roger Makanjuola, a former vice chancellor in his memoir – ‘Water Must Flow Uphill: Adventures in University Administration’ comes readily to mind. By design, the idea of a protest is to draw attention to a social ill and use it as an avenue to reach out to authorities within and without on the wrongs being perpetrated and what needs to be done and any other issue that the group feels are worthy of attention. The hundreds of students that represented the about 15,000 students of the University of Ibadan however did great injustice to the memory of late Mayowa. Their style was without substance. It was at best a knee jerk response to the unfortunate death. They stopped flow of traffic on the Trunk B road across the university and also molested a number of individuals including journalists who tried to cover the protest and wanted picture or video evidence to go with it. The irony even lies in what a number of them said while on the protest –‘we want the world to know what happened at University of Ibadan’, they chanted. Yet these gentlemen and women alike were not willing to have their faces identified with the protest. They wanted the words out on their own poorly conceived terms. A newspaper correspondent with the New Telegraph reportedly had his shirts torn into shreds by some of the students even as he lost his phones in the resultant melee. Apparently, the students concluded that it was unfair to be part of the protest and then later be identified. For them, the fear of the disciplinary committee of the University is the fear of wisdom. This then put to question the moral burden they carry in seeking justice for late Mayowa. They forget that it may be Mayowa’s turn today and another tomorrow is a system that make health a priority are not in place.
Facebook and Twitter; two of the most prominent platforms in Nigeria are blank when a search for #MayowaAlaran is drawn. One will have expected undergraduates of the University of Ibadan to marshal a clear action plan for the protests and make available even press releases for journalists and the retinue of citizen journalists passing by who may have been drawn by human compassion following knowledge of what the protest is about. Selfies and mentions of human rights organisations will have drawn even international attention to the students concerns. One will have expected #JusticeforAlaran to trend courtesy of an organised protest. One will have expected interviews to be granted by the hall chair of Independence Hall where the students died or even the leadership of the University’s students’ body. That door was shut immediately the students took every passer-by with a phone as their enemy.
Information and response on the issue was also slow in coming forth from the university. This is 2015 and a single tweet from the university or even a Youtube video from the Vice chancellor may have made the difference. Jaja Clinic needs to be overhauled in the same way the payment of school fees has been organised. The university needs to come up with creative ways of making registration and capturing of medical history by the clinic came be a pre-requisite to registration upon admission. It will be refreshing to see students walk into the clinic and all they are asked is their university registration number and not a request to see their cards. Maybe it will make for a Master Degree thesis; at least Google is a product of a Ph.D. scholarship by the duo of Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Barcelona went ahead to trounce the Pep Guardiola side by a stunning 3-0 by then the world had lost another young mind whose exploits we will never know.
@SolaFagro
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‘Sola Fagorusi is a social entrepreneur and a prized freelance writer with a bias for youth and rural development. He started off as a youth staff with Action Health Incorporated in 2001. The Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife alumnus currently manages the programmes ofOneLife Initiative, Nigeria. ‘Sola is a DESPLAY Africa (Africa’s foremost and most consistent annual youth democracy academy) fellow and has been on its faculty since 2011. Keenly interested in governance and pan-Africanism, he volunteers as online editor of YouthHub Africa; a cyber-community for young Africans involved in social change. He believes in the efficacy of oratory and writing as tools to drive developmental engagements. As a freelance writer, he spares time to pen thoughts on contemporary societal issues and is a weekly columnist with Nigeria’s most read daily ? Punch Newspaper. His training and capacity cuts across democracy and governance, leadership, micro-enterprise, ICT4D, SRH, value chains, development communication and policy issues. He tweets @SolaFagro and blogs at www.kadunaboy.com
