Members of the Writers Guild of the Kenyatta University in a group photograph with African liberty champion, Adedayo Thomas

African liberty champion, Adedayo Thomas (in cap) with members of the Writers Guild of the Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya on October 25 after Thomas delivered a lecture entitled The Role of Student-Journalists in Creating the Foundation for a Free African Society. The event was attended by over 150 students.

Photo: Writers Guild lecture, Kenya

Source: Thenationonlineng

Kogi varsity goes tough on sale of handout, sexual harassment

The Management of Kogi State University (KSU) in Anyigba has warned staff, that textbooks, and harass of students to desist or face the law.

The management said it would not condone any form of extortion of students by lecturers and non-academic staff.

In a statement by the Registrar, Mr J.A. Zhizhi, the university noted that the warning had become necessary in view of several allegations bordering on exploitative sales of unauthorised hand-outs, journals and books before, during, and after registration of students.

Other activities frowned at included deliberate delay of project assessment by supervisors in order to extort gratification, collection of unauthorised levies during defence of thesis and dissertations.

While stressing that the reported cases were being investigated, the management appealed to students and members of staff who may have been affected by these activities to promptly report to management.

Our investigations revealed that aside from money extorted from students on the sale of the hand-outs, journals and text books at exorbitant rates, names of such students are written for undue advantages

“Some members of staff give assignments to students and make them  contribute several thousands of naira each. The staff will then direct the unsuspecting students to town to hire equipment and facilities owned by them to do the assignments.The staff’s private equipment and facilities are poor and substandard, but are hired by students at exorbitant costs, compared to the state of the art equipment and facilities owned by the university, which are never made available to students to use for assignments,” some sources lamented.

source: Thenationonlineng

Students hooked on hookah

. HABEEB WHYTE (Nigerian Law School, Abuja campus) writes.

t is a beautifully designed object. The affluent use it to cool down, puffing smoke from their mouths and nostrils. In the Arab world, men sit in circles on a mat in the open, the object before them. It is also common in highbrow clubs and hotels. Hookah “is a cool way of smoking”, so say those who use it.

The device has found its way onto campuses, where student-smokers take delight in using it. To them, it is bye-bye cigarette, welcome hookah.

But Hookah (or shisha, as it is popularly called) is enjoyable and hazardous. Hookah is a single or multi-stemmed apparatus for smoking flavoured tobacco in which the smoke is passed through a water basin before inhalation. For smokers, the experience and enjoyment are nothing compared with the satisfaction derived from smoking cigarette. From the thickness of its smoke and its tobacco content, Hookah is seen as the favourite of smokers, who derive pleasure in puffing dense clouds of smoke from their noses and mouths.

The apparatus comes with four major components – a bowl, pipe, hose and smoke chamber- which are set up by smokers. This is unlike a cigarette, which is lit effortlessly.

An average Hookah smoking session lasts more than 40 minutes, in contrast to cigarette, which burns out in a few minutes. However, in an hour-long of smoking hookah, smokers consume about 100 to 200 times the volume of tobacco in a cigarette.

Also, the chemical composition of tobacco in a cigarette and hookah are different. The charcoal in hookah causes the tobacco, which is mixed with other ingredients, to be heated at a lower temperature, in contrast to a cigarette, where the tobacco is burnt at high temperature.

Since smokers consume higher tobacco in Hookah than in a stick of cigarette, it is believed hookah is hazardous to health. Despite the health consequence, student-smokers are gradually changing from cigarette to tobacco-rich hookah, spending thousands to buy the instrument.

A complete set of hookah is expensive. The least affordable electronic hookah goes for N2,100, compared to a stick of cigarette that sells for N10.

In 2005, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that water-pipe (hookah) smoking poses a serious health hazard to smokers and people around them. The body said hookah is not a safe alternative to cigarette smoking.

But student-smokers are not deterred by this warning. A single hookah is enough for a group of 10 to smoke tobacco to their satisfaction. Some smokers claim hookah is good to keep the body warm during the cold. But in all weathers, the instrument is not far away from student-smokers.

To the surprise of many, hookah smokers are not limited to male students; female undergraduates also engage in it.

To Abu Bakre, a student of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in Zaria, Kaduna State, hookah is the best way to smoke. “I smoke it whenever I hang out with my friends. We catch fun, smoking it together. I love the gum and mint flavour a lot. I smoke it twice in a week. It has made me stop smoking cigarette and I am happy about it. I used to exhaust a pack in a day but now, I prefer hookah because of its flavour.”

To relax, Solomon Ebiaku, an HND II Accounting student of Moshood Abiola Polythecnic (MAPOLY) in Abeokuta, Ogun State smoke hookah. He said the instrument comes with a different smoking experience. He said: “It is something that I do once in a while. Although, some people smoke it daily but personally, I see nothing bad in it. Whether I smoke hookah or not should not be anybody’s headache. I believe I have rights to my privacy. Hookah has helped to reduce the number of cigarette smokers among students. Cigarette is cheap and harmful but hookah is expensive but reasonable.”

In some campuses, hookah is not readily available to students. They only have opportunity to smoke it in clubs and hotels.

With N1,000, you can enjoy hookah 100 times more than the way you enjoy cigarette, Supo Laniyan, a 500-Level Agriculture student at the Olabisi Onabanjo University in Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State said.

“The only thing that is disturbing is the abuse. Normally, the bottom container is meant to be filled with water but students now fill it with gin and rum. Also, the flavour is meant to be inhaled without being mixed but smokers here have devised means of mixing it with weed and other hard drugs. This distorts the concept,” he said.

According to Ibrahim Salako, an ND II Civil Engineering student of the Federal Polytechnic in Ilaro (ILARO POLY), Ogun State, hookah smokers are deceived by its sweet flavours. “The bottomline is that hookah smokers die faster than people who smoke cigarette because carbon in hookah is equivalent to 200 sticks of cigarette. So what makes hookah less harmful?” he wondered.

Abimbola Solola, a 300-Level Sociology student of the University of Ilorin (UNILORIN), said: “Hookah is dangerous to our health, but the manner students are getting addicted to it is worrisome. It has become an everyday thing on campus now.”

Odunayo Whyte, a 300-Level Business and Education Studies student at the Federal College of Education (FCE), Abeokuta,said he learnt about hookah when the photogragh of a female smoker went viral on the social media.

He said: “I discovered that students who smoke hookah are being influenced by people who are supposed to guide them. It is now everywhere on campuses today. We even have hookah competition, where students in various schools post their pictures on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to compare thickness of smoke. This is reality of ill in our society.”

Source: Thenationonlineng

NIJ Students' Protest

by: Michael Durojaiye

The protest took the management by surprise but students of the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ) in Ogba, Lagos, were determined to register their displeasure. They protested what they called “abnormal treatment” meted out to their colleagues by the school authorities.

The protest, which was held in the premises of the institution last Tuesday, followed management’s decision to stop some students from writing their exams because of the damage they caused to the school’s solar panel in March this year.

The school authority had ordered the affected students to pay N66,389 for the damages, adding that failure to follow the directive could cause them to fail the course and get extra year.

The affected students were Emmanuel Bassey, National Diploma (ND) II and Michael Okunnu, Higher National Diploma (HND) 1.

Chairman of the Students’ Representative Council, Matthew Ojebola, described the management’s action as unfair, claiming that it was out of place to treat the students unjustly after paying for maintenance and caution fees.

The examination, which was to commence 10:00a.m was rescheduled for 3:00p.m as the Provost of the Institute, Mrs Elizabeth Ikem, listened to the demands of the students, allowing the affected students access to write the exam.

Source: The Nation.

STUDENTS TO PROTEST ON THE ON-GOING ASUP STRIKE

 by: Emeka Onwudinjo 

Members of the National Association of Polytechnics Students (NAPS) have scheduled a peaceful protest in Abuja over the protracted Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) strike, which has paralysed activities in polytechnics for over 10 months.

In a statement, NAPS Senate President, Lukman Salahudeen, said: “It is obvious that our governments have no provision for the future of this nation. It is pathetic to see that the Senate Committee on Education has done little to resolve the crisis. In our estimation, we reject the insensitivity, unpatriotic and ineffective act of the supervising Minister of Education, Mr Nyesome Wike; he has failed to attend the committee’s meeting for the second time.”

Without readiness of the government to resolve with lecturers, Lukman said students would take their destinies into their hands by marching on Presidential Villa in Abuja to “let Mr President see reasons for him to intervene fully and end the strike just the way he did with ASUU”

Aso Rock, he said, would be considered as campus until their campuses reopen. He urged his colleagues to see the protest as a collective struggle to salvage the nation’s education from “total collapse”.

SOURCE: The Nation.

Student traders' world

by: KEMI BUSARI

For Toyosi Kolade, shoe-making is not the exclusive preserve of men. She acquired the skill to make a living and pay her way through school. A visit to her room in Ladoke Akintola Hall of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) in Ile-Ife, Osun State, showed how passionate she is about the vocation.
Shoes of various sizes are scattered all over the place.
Toyosi, 22, has just finished from the Political Science Department, but in her last two years, she paid her fees from the money she made as a cobbler. Toyosi ventured into shoe-making to assist her parents.
She said: “I started shoe-making when I resumed for my third year on campus. A skill acquisition programme came up in my church for youths to learn any trade that would make them independent. I opted for something unique from what others are doing. I chose to make and repair shoes; this fed me throughout my stay on campus.”
When she started, she was mocked by people who felt she was in a wrong vocation. Toyosi said: “People made me to feel ashamed of myself by mocking me whenever they heard that a female student is doing such work. But I never let that discourage me. In the end, some of the people who taunted me ended up being my customers.”
Toyosi never allowed the trade to affect her academic pursuit. The Ekiti State-born cobbler said she devoted ample time to her studies and entrepreneurial skill.
“The reason I ventured into shoe making and repairing is for me to support my parents’ expenses on me. I have always liked to be independent but there was no means. But when I learned the trade, I was able to pay up to 40 per cent of my fees in school.”
She is not alone in this kind of business. Her colleague, Adeniyi Taiwo, who graduated from the Department of Geography, sells moin-moin (bean cake) at Awolowo Hall. He prepares the garnished moin-moin in thick leaves for sells and each between N25 and N30.
Adeniyi, who hawks the moin-moin himself, said: “I was motivated to start this because of the meagre resources I got from home. I needed to have my own source of income to be able to pay some little expenses in school. It is not everything that you ask from your parents.”
To him, the trade is not for women alone. Adeniyi said: “The only business you can tag as women’s trade is the one only a female can handle. In the case of selling moin-moin, everybody can do it, in so far the aim is to make money.”
Adeniyi moves from one room to the other, hawking.
In Imo State, Ellen Sunday made her mark, combining business, academics and spiritual life. Ellen, who started from a few wraps of groundnut and sugar in 2012, now manages a full scale business, selling pepper, tomato and kerosene in large quantities.
“I really want to be independent,” she said, when asked why she dabbled into the business. She added: “I was tired of asking for money from my parents all the time. I started when I was in 300-Level, but when I resumed for final year, I increased my stock and sold to students in large quantities.”
Of all the wares, Ellen said it is tomato that is most profitable. “I started the trade with about N2,000 but I can’t really determine how much it has grown into. My trade has multiplied even beyond my expectations,” she added.
Ellen said she is proud to be a student-trader, saying she paid 95 per cent of expenses on campus from the business. “Although my parents used to send money to me but, most times, I won’t touch it. The business paid up to 95 per cent of my expenses on campus,” she said.
“If I choose to sleep conveniently on my bed, hunger will wake me up. This was why I found it better to discomfort myself so that hunger would not eventually discomfort me,” Bamidele Adeleke, a graduate of Sociology and Anthropology, who eked out a living selling bread, said.
Instead of sleeping on his bed, Bamidele stockpiles bread on his mattress and squats with his friends.
He started the business early this year because of what he called “economic meltdown in the family”, which reduced his pocket money from home.
He said: “I started the business with N1,600 and six packs of bread. Today, I sell about 10 packs a day, which is more than N4,000. The business paid up to 85 per cent of my expenses on campus.”
Now that they have graduated, does that the death of their business?
Bamidele, who is currently taking the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) courses, said nothing would separate him from bread business, even as a graduate.
After her National Youth Service, Toyosi said she would start a shoe-making business on a large scale, urging her colleagues to acquire vocational skills in addition to their academic degrees.
Adeniyi would like to be his own boss by going into entrepreneurship. Ellen said she would continue the business after school but on a large scale. “I have a dream to have a supermarket of my own,” she said.
Source: The Nation.

'UNIJOS' opt for funds for new courses

by: Yusufu Aminu Ideg.

Vice Chancellor of the University of Jos (UNIJOS), Prof Hayward Babale Mafuyai, says that the university has to raise funds to be able to run the new courses it recently introduced.
Mafuyai who disclosed this at a pre-fund raising media briefing on Tuesday, solicited for support for the programmes.
“For the university to run these new courses effectively, it needs to rely on its friends and well wishers to raise funds with which to run the new course. The new programmes are in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Engineering, Agriculture and others.
Apart from the three new Faculties mentioned above, there are several other new programs being introduced by the University in a number of existing Faculties which include, Music in the Faculty of Arts, Dentistry in the Faculty of Medicine, Physical and Health Education as well as Integrated Science in the Faculty of Education, among others.
SOURCE: The Nation.