The dust raised by the recently constructed link bridges on OAU campus by the SUG is obviously not settling anytime soon. Press statements, imbibed with assertions, accusations and counter-accusations, fly around madly like the bats of OAU. Barely has the tree heaved in relief, another burden weighs it down.
Barely a day after Welfare Officer Ojogbon released a press statement criticising the ERC and stating his case, Comrade Engels Oluwole of the ERC has given his reply.
In his statement, he promptly dismissed the allegation of him intending to destroy the bridges. He described it as “outrageous…unsubstantiated,jejune and petty”. He described the concept of a students’ union embarking on public projects, as a misplacement of priority, and the argument in favour of it illogical and purely sentimental. He said:
“A students’ union is not a department of the university administration, it is a platform for students to hold articulate voice and demand for what is theirs…As big and wealthy as ASUU is as a union, it will never wake up one day and start building classroom or erecting sound system so as to attenuate the suffering of their members who teach large classes”.
He said that a pro-student CEC would have demanded explanation for the deteriorating infrastructure, since the fee increment was premised on the “need to develop the campus and help students”, instead of covering up for the management. He criticized the union for astoing as the voice of the management, informing students when there would be no electricity, instead of asking what happened to the university generators.
He described the process by which the budget was passed as “militarized”. He said that “bouncers” had been hired to keep gallerians, away so that less 20 parliamentarians could pass the budget.
He described the receipt tendered by Ojogbon stating the cost of the project to be #325,800 as “political kabuki”. His reason for this was that the issuer of the receipt stated his specialty to be metal works, leaving the true cost of workmanship, cement as grey areas. He described a vibrant union as one that would champion the cause of students against intellectual sadism, which had resulted in mass failure.
In conclusion, he said:
“If Ojogbon will weep again, let him weep for the values which himself and his colleagues are demolishoing; he should not weep because students question the reasonability of CEC programmes and principles”.
Source: http://oauchristians.com/engels-comforts-the-weeping-ojogbon/
0 comments: