Since its establishment 22 years ago, the Imo State University (IMSU) has been operating without a students’ hostel.
It has now got one, courtesy of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), reports SamPson Unamka.
At last, we are on the road to freedom. I feel like a bird freed from the cage of shylock landlords and estate managers. It’s a great feeling seeing this magnificent structure built by the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, to free our students from the strangle-hold of private hostel developers.” That was how Ekene Ahaneku, the Students Union Director of Information, reacted in the building of an ultra-modern hostel for Imo State University (IMSU) by NDDC.
Ahaneku was celebrating with other students at the inauguration of the 174-room NDDC proto-type hostel at the university on July 18.
For the university, it was a dream come true considering its history of moving from one place to the other since inception in 1981. Its acting Vice Chancellor, Prof Ukachukwu Awuzie, who is a former president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), said the university was blessed to have its first students’ hostel from NDDC.
The university and the people of the state, he said, would remain grateful to NDDC for building the hostel, thanking the commission’s board, especially its Chairman, Dr. Tarilah Tebepah, who he described as a fellow comrade, for the gesture.
The hostel, he said, could not have come at a better time than now that the Imo government had approved the university’s permanent site. He said the hostel would help IMSU to upgrade to a residential university. “The non-residency status of the university has created untold hardships for our students who must pay very unrealistic and exorbitant rents for accommodation often far from the university, with the attendant transportation difficulties,” he said.
The jubilation that day was infectious. President of the Students’ Union Government (SUG) Comrade Chigozie Ogbu thanked NDDC for the hostel, which he said would provide convenience for the students and also boost their self-esteem.
After consulting with other board members, Tebepah approved the construction of a link road between the hostel and the campus and the building of a cafeteria in the hostel.
He said the commissioning of the hostel would pave the way for the handover of other completed projects in the Niger Delta region. The NDDC Managing Director, Dr. Christian Oboh, noted that the contractor delivered on time because there was peace in the university. He said President Goodluck Jonathan should be praised for empowering the commission to serve the people of the Niger Delta. He said: “The hostel project is NDDC’s contribution to the transformation agenda of Mr. President.”
The traditional ruler of Owerri, Eze Emmanuel Njemanze, said the wind of transformation blowing across the country had also reached his domain through the hostel.The hostel, he said, would provide the much-needed environment for the grooming of students in character and learning before they graduate.
He said: “I have no doubt that a suitable environment plays a key role in the character formation of people. In my view, the anti-social behaviour often exhibited by students of higher institutionsmay not be totally unrelated to the environment which theyfind themselves. Clearly, a good hostel accommodation will contribute to the sound intellectual and character formation of our children. The regulating body for university education in the country recognised this fact and initiated some studies to enable it get a full grasp of the situation. One of such inquiries by the National Universities Commission (NUC) sought to find out why Nigerian students fail to perform well when they leave the universities with supposedly good degrees.
“The studies brought out some interesting findings. The main reason for poor quality graduates was blamed on poor facilities and their conditions prevalent in the universities. In the main, lack of hostels in university campuses took a greater share of the blame. The “Preliminary Survey of Students’ Accommodation” by the NUC showed that the provision of hostel accommodation in Nigerian universities is below 30 percent average of the student population.”
Comrade Rafael Okwara, the President of the National Association of Imo State Students, said NDDC’s intervention in the IMSU accommodation crisis was timely. He said a situation where students were forced to live off-campus, made them susceptible to extraneous influences such as cultism andother vices
