UI VC bans students from cooking in hostels

Authorities of the fragile peace at the University of Ibadan (UI) manifested on Monday banned students from cooking in the halls of residence. The ban was placed by the institution’s Vice Chancellor, Prof. Isaac Folorunso Adewole.

At the ‘Town Hall’ meeting held with the students at the Trenchard Hall, it was disclosed that the ban became necessary in view of the colossal amount of money being spent yearly on electricity bill.

The VC said that the management spent over N400 million on maintenance of hall while it generated about N144 million from the halls last year, adding, “the university is shifting to providing essentials of studying to students rather than spending on electricity mostly used for cooking in their halls.

“We will not allow the University of Ibadan to die. The problem of accommodation on UI has to do with access and cost.

“The access deals with how many students that can be accommodated. With about 21,000 undergraduates, we can only accommodate 8,000 students.

“In last session we spent N317million on electricity bill and power generation alone.

“We have been subsidising the accommodation, but that cannot continue. The Federal Government does not send any subvention for this”, Adewole stated.

He maintained that no student must cook in the hall again, noting  that alternative provision had been made for light cooking in the kitchenette, where electric metre would be fixed to know the power consumed.

According to him, “It is not negotiable. There shall be no cooking in the rooms, any defaulter caught will be sanctioned.

“For light meals, we will reactivate the kitchenette. It is not compulsory that a student stay in the halls.

“Only those who can comply with our rules will be accommodated. No kerosene stove shall be allowed in the hall of residence, if you want to use it, stay away from our halls”.

He alerted that there will be upward review in fees from next session based on what he called realistic data.

The VC said: “We are using this year as experiment year to gather data and know the actual energy being consumed per session so as to arrive at a suitable and realistic fee to be charged. The fee might change as from next session”.

The policy however attracted wild condemnation from the generality of the students, who booed the VC and said he was behaving like a military Head of State with a vow to however resist the move described as draconian.