3 REASONS WHY SUG’S PARKING-LOT PROJECT IS A SCAM
By: Muneer
So, I was asked why Muneer Yaqub has never seen anything good in this administration of UDUS’ Students’ Union. You laughed. Yes, so did I. Well, perhaps because Journalism has no other definition to me than one: exposing the ills of the society, for a change (emphasis on Change). I subscribe to George Orwell’s school of thought, that ‘Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is Public Relations’. So, I’m not a public relations officer. No. I’m a Journalist.
So, some months back, while our amiable ASUU–whose name thunder now hears and flees–was on strike, news broke that the UDUS’ SU had executed a ‘welfare’ project, a couple of Bike parking-lots situated at strategic locations on campus. Awesome. You see? Here in Sokoto, Bikes are like Benz: so highly revered and esteemed. Only that while Benz may require rigorous arithmetic as ’10 pantimeter makes 1 Benzimeter’, Bikes are just so easy to come by. At the front of an occupied lecture theater in UDUS, bikes are parked like fishes, packed in Sardine. Almost half of the class population are bike owners. So, bike theft here is pretty lucrative, hence rampant.
Ordinarily, the parking-lot project would have been a fantastic one. Though, yet commissioned, there’s every likelihood that it’s a scam.
First, the locations are wrong. They used to be refreshment areas. Particularly the ones at ETF 3 and Exam Hall. Students did seek solace in the canopies of those trees for shade, away from the madness of the sun, and to savor the cool breeze they had to provide. But all thanks to SU’s parking lots, students’ heads now overheat (coupled with ‘boko-pressure’; well, you know what that means?), as they no longer have sheds in those ‘strategic’ locations.
Second, the project is set to be monetized. If you have a bike, SU will not help you protect it–under their ‘welfare’ project, built with your levy–unless you pay ‘a token’. You see? Now, okay, I don’t have shit to pay for some flimsy security welfare, I just want to park my bike jejely somewhere safe. Well, sorry, SU has already occupied all the safe spaces you could have parked your bike, with their monetized parking-lot.
The implication of this is that student bike-owners are left in a dilemma: It’s either you pay SU to park in the safe lot, or you park your bike for free in an unsafe corner away from it. Well, seems i need someone to define Welfare? It’s been long i last checked my dictionary.
Third, no transparency, no accountability. No single word has been said so far on how much was (as far as i am concerned) ‘wasted’ on the project, and how the monies were spent. It is amazing the kinds of response i receive from my colleagues who have gone to ask.
Mr. President does not know. The Welfare Director ‘has no figures in his head.’ Like it was not they who initiated and executed the project. And when he would finally come up with a reply, after so much pestering, the Welfare Director would say that ‘the prices were official, and that they do not concern the students.’ You laughed? Well, I did too. Whatever ‘official’ means. How sure are we that our SU Dons have not siphoned our hard-earned funds for personal use? (I even heard some of them want to contest for bigger posts in the next election.)
Anyways, a big thank you to our caring SU Excos for their well-meaning parking lot project. But we at UDUS have refused to be scammed!
Muneer Yaqub is President National Association of Campus Journalists, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto.