OAU Begins Academic Activities For The 2015/2016 Session Today
Monday, 8 August 2016
Sunday, 7 August 2016
Ten Useful Tips For OAU Freshmen- Adigun Olayemi Paul
Here are some advice for the new intakes on campus to wade off distractions and unnecessary poke-nosing from others into their affairs. They are also in line to help them develop a strong will on campus. The tips are as follows:
1. Don’t be Anxious - As a fresh undergraduate, it is expedient for you not to be too anxious in anything you do. Do not let your anxiousness lead to your fall but rather be relaxed and take everything step by step. Being anxious may lead you into doing some unwanted things and also make you lose focus.
2. Be focused - In whatever thing you do let your mind and soul be totally connected to it. Don't be discouraged, destabilized and disturbed, but rather try to attain every set steps of yours with your full concentration.
3. Right Advisors - May I tell you that you will meet with different people on campus from different backgrounds but it is left to you to determine the ones that will be of help with useful advice i.e. life changing and encouraging advice.
4. Choose your friends wisely – You are bound to have friends on campus but you will have to know your real friends, know those who you will be going out with. It is easy for you to choose your real friends by monitoring closely their attitude and behaviour. It will be good for you to choose those that will affect your life positively.
5. Attend Classes - It is necessary for you to always attend classes at all times and in any venue. All these will determine your success because there are some important points that the lecturer may tend to expose during his lectures but won't be written down as notes, through that you'll get it and have an edge.
6. Study Regularly - As an undergraduate you don't have to wait until only tests and exams periods till you start reading. Start your reading as early as possible, this will make you strong during test and exam periods. Designate some hours to read every day, if possible.
7. Time Management - This is most essential while in school. Plan your time wisely and schedule your daily activities, write out your set-out plans daily. Draw your plan for the day and for the week. Time management creates an avenue for you to maximize your time wisely and resist all distractions thereby increasing your concentration.
8. Avoid discouragement - Discouragement is bound to happen anytime on campus, but your attitude towards solving it will make you succeed. Try to be strong in all circumstances and learn to face all challenges, be it academically, health wise, financial aspects etc. Always know that it is just for a period of time. Find encouragement in discouraging situations.
9. Set your goals - Set your goals per semester. Set everything you want to achieve and work towards it. Don't leave any stone unturned.
10. Pray Always - The paramount key to living through every situation (good or bad) is prayer. Know your God as He's able to lead you to greater path and help in securing your future.
Adigun Olayemi Paul is a Language student at the Obafemi Awolowo University and a member of OAU Peeps News Agency.
OAU Fynestboi Emerges Mr Nairaland
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| Boluwajaiye Adeoluwa Fynestboi |
Boluwajaiye Adeoluwa, a 300 level student of the Department of Philosophy and President of the National Association of Philosophy Students (NAPS) OAU has emerged winner in the just concluded Mr Nairaland Contest. Fynestboi, as he is popularly known, won the contest with 394 votes.
We at OAU Peeps hereby use this medium to extend our hearty congratulations to Mr Nairaland.
Saturday, 6 August 2016
OAU Law Student Recounts Kidnap Experience
A 300L student of the Faculty of Law, Obafemi Awolowo University, Adelakin Praise has narrated her near death experience in the hands of Kidnappers who disguised as public transport buses. In a chat with OAU Peeps News Agency, she reaffirms her ordeals as earlier published by the Punch Newspaper. Though currently safe and sound, Praise further relayed that she cannot say the state of the other persons also involved in the incident. Read her full experience as extracted from the Punch Newspaper below;
"It was one day that will always give 18-year-old Praise Adelakin nightmares. That day, a journey from Ile-Ife, Osun State, to Ibadan, Oyo State, that was supposed to take her about two hours only, almost turned out to be a journey of no return.
A 300 Level Law student of Obafemi Awolowo University, Praise had gone to the school in the morning of that day to check whether her things were still intact in her hostel before resumption after some weeks of strike by lecturers in the institution.
Around 4pm, when she ensured she had put everything in place, she left for the Mayfair Motor Park in the town to board a bus going to Ibadan, where her family resides.
All things being equal, she should have been back in Ibadan by around 6pm on the same day, but by 12 midnight of the following day, she found herself in Ilorin, Kwara State.
Narrating the incident to our correspondent in Ibadan on Tuesday, she said, “We’ve been on strike for some weeks. Meanwhile, freshers had resumed three weeks before the strike, but due to the action, they were also sent back home. On July 23, I decided to go to school to check if my things were still intact and probably whether they had allocated my space (at Moremi Hall) to someone else. I got there and saw that my things had been scattered; my mattress had also been taken away with my buckets and other things, so I had to go round the rooms to gather them together. When I did that, I put them in my locker and locked them up.
“When I finished all that, I decided to return home and that was around 4pm. I had arrived in school by 11am. So I went to the Mayfair Motor Park in Ife to get a bus back to Ibadan. It’s a popular motor park in the town because it’s a public one. When I got there, there were only two passengers in the bus and the driver was hanging around somewhere. All the same, I entered the bus to wait until we had enough passengers to take off. As of 7pm, we were only nine in the 18-seater white Mazda bus. It was getting dark, so everyone started complaining. We begged the driver to take off and told him that while on the way, it was possible he would get more passengers. He agreed and we took off.”
Praise and other passengers were happy the driver heeded their pleas. Nothing in the driver’s appearance or the look of the bus suggested anything sinister. After all, they boarded the bus in a motor park, Praise thought.
The journey proceeded normally until the driver swerved off the major road. He told them it was a short-cut to Ibadan. But the path turned out to be a ‘long-cut.’
She continued, “There is a university outside Ife town called Oduduwa University. A few minutes drive past it, our driver said he wanted to pass through a short-cut. He said because it was weekend, there was traffic in front. So he took us through the route. When we turned to pass through the so-called short-cut, we saw a bus in front of us and there was another bus behind us. It was a bushy path, but we were not so afraid because of the other two buses which were also taking the route. We thought it was a route which would take us to Ibadan faster.
“As we were going through the path, we got to a junction where we saw that the bus which was in front of us was already parked. The passengers had disembarked. As we got there, we were also flagged down by a group of about five men; our driver stopped and he himself ordered us to get down. Everyone was shocked and we wondered what was happening, but nobody talked. We were all just looking. The bus behind us was also stopped and all of us passengers in the three buses were up to 40. They asked us to lie face down. At that point, I became afraid as I knew something was wrong. As I lay down, I quickly sent a message on my phone to my dad, reading, ‘Dad, I am held hostage and I don’t even know where we are. I think I am in danger. Please pray for me.’ I could use my phone to send the message because when they ordered us to lie down, the men went for a meeting at a nearby bush, together with our driver. My dad called me back after a few minutes, but I couldn’t pick it. The phone rang out. When they heard that my phone rang, they came back and collected my phone and others’. After collecting our phones, they went back to their meeting.
“After a while, they returned and surprisingly, they asked the passengers in my driver’s bus to get back in. They instructed our driver to go and ‘dismiss’ us off. I was afraid. I thought ‘dismissing us’ meant ‘killing us.’ Our driver looked disappointed, so he shouted at us to get in; he was now holding a gun. Everybody kept quiet. Then he drove away inside the bush till it was really dark. When it was around 10pm, he started dropping us one by one. He would drive for about 10 minutes, drop a passenger and give him or her their phone and bag, then drive for another 10 minutes, drop another passenger, and on and on like that. He would spread the phones out and ask the person to pick their phone. It finally got to my turn and I think I was the sixth passenger to be dropped, I can’t remember full well because at that point, I had become so confused.”
When Praise got out of the bus, it was then that it dawned on her that she was in another world, in the middle of a forest and the screech of insects. By then, tt was around 11pm.
“He stopped me at a T-junction and gave me my phones, but they were already dead, so I couldn’t contact anyone. When he dropped me, he told me I was at Share (Kwara State). I didn’t know where Share was then. It was very dark, around 11pm. The village was quiet. Anywhere I turned to, it was forest all around me. I got to know later that Share was very close to Niger State. It’s a border town between Kwara and Niger states,” she said.
Suddenly, in the midst of the the forest and darkness, she heard the sound of a motorcycle coming towards her direction.
She continued, “I flagged down the rider and he stopped. I asked him, ‘I was told this is Share. Please, where is the nearest town or somewhere where I can get help from?’ The man simply said, ‘Ilorin.’ I know Ilorin quite well because my grandparents stay there, I once schooled there and my aunt still lives there. I got on the motorcycle and he took me from the jungle to Ilorin. When he dropped me, I could recognise the area and found out that the place was actually close to my aunt’s house, around Basin area.
“I asked him how much I should pay him. He just nodded his head and zoomed off. He didn’t utter a word or ask for money. Meanwhile, I was lucky my phone came up again, so I quickly called my dad that I was in Ilorin and that I was near my aunt’s place. He quickly notified my aunt that I was coming.
“I was dumbfounded. From where the motorcyclist dropped me, I trekked to my aunt’s house for some minutes and when I got to the door, around 12 am on Sunday, I knocked. She was a bit scared because she was expecting no one. She asked who was knocking. I replied, ‘It’s me, Praise.’ She retorted, ‘Which Praise?’ I said, ‘Praise Adelakin.’ She asked again, ‘Praise Adelakin from where?’ We often talk and so she recognised my voice. She then said someone should open the gate for me. She just didn’t know what to do when she saw me in the middle of the night.”
In the morning of that Sunday, Praise’s parents came for her in Ilorin to take her back home. But up till now, she has yet to recover from the incident.
She said, “I wouldn’t know what happened to the other passengers in the two other buses. I’m still trying to get over it because I’m still scared of boarding buses right now. I used to enter any bus as long as I see people inside it, but my experience has taught me to be more conscious. I am still amazed. It was not the first time I would board a bus from the park, and it is even a public park. It wasn’t a lift.
“My parents came over to Ilorin to pick me up on Sunday to return to Ibadan. They said they immediately started praying for me when I sent them the message. They also told me they went to the police station in Ibadan and contacted another one in Ife to report the incident, but the police said they couldn’t do anything about it.
“The police said they should go to MTN office to track my phone to know where I was. MTN said they needed a police report, which the police couldn’t give because they didn’t know about the incident. Everything was complicated. They said they had to resort to prayers throughout the night. I just thank God I am still alive to tell this story. I don’t know what would have happened to the passengers in the two other buses. I will be back to school this weekend as the strike has been called off.”
Could she describe the driver, his conversation with his fellow suspected ritualists and the area they were taken to?
Praise said, “I didn’t hear their conversation because they really went far away, but they could still monitor us. They talked in low tones. I can’t really describe the area but I know it’s a few minutes’ drive after passing the Oduduwa University that he branched into the bush.
“Our driver was wearing an ankara dress that day; he has an average height and dark-complexioned. Except one old man, almost all other passengers were students. I suspect that the drivers of the other two buses too belong to the gang because they all held the meeting together.”
Praise’s father, Timothy Adelakin, who is a pastor, said when he received his daughter’s message that she was in danger that day, his heart jumped out.
He said, “I just thank God for how He acted in the situation. When she was about leaving Ife that day, she called to say she was returning home and I thought she should be home two hours later. We were attending a prayer meeting in the church; we were rounding off when her message came in that I should pray for her. She said they were held hostage and she didn’t know where they were.
“When I got her text, I told the church members what had happened. I called other pastor colleagues to pray for us. We prayed again till 11pm. Around midnight, her aunt called me and said, ‘Speak to Praise.’ The next voice I heard was hers. I was filled with joy.
“I would like the authorities to investigate this incident because it is surprising that a driver from a public park could do this. They must have been doing it before. Praise told me the passengers of their bus and the two other buses were mostly students, so I am worried what would have happened to her colleagues. I have already instructed her never to board private cars and she doesn’t do it. But with something like this happening in a public park, it is worrisome.”
Meanwhile, Saturday PUNCH learned that the Mayfair motor park closes by 4pm and vehicles no longer load passengers from the park after this time.
The Chairman of the National Union of Road Transport Workers, Ife 1 Branch, Mr. Gbadegesin Asiyanbi, when visited at the park, said Praise could not have boarded the bus from inside the park at the time she got there.
Asiyanbi said activities at the park close by 4pm, after which any driver is allowed to pick passengers on the road irrespective of where they come from.
He said, “There are no kidnappers in our motor park. I have never heard of anything like that. There is no way such thing can happen, we know ourselves, our members are true drivers.
“We lower our flag by 4pm and as you can see for yourself now (around 5:30pm when
Saturday PUNCH visited on Thursday), there are no vehicles on queue, so anybody who boarded a vehicle between 6pm and 7pm here and is claiming they boarded it from our park is either ignorant or telling lies.”
Credit - The Punch
"It was one day that will always give 18-year-old Praise Adelakin nightmares. That day, a journey from Ile-Ife, Osun State, to Ibadan, Oyo State, that was supposed to take her about two hours only, almost turned out to be a journey of no return.
A 300 Level Law student of Obafemi Awolowo University, Praise had gone to the school in the morning of that day to check whether her things were still intact in her hostel before resumption after some weeks of strike by lecturers in the institution.
Around 4pm, when she ensured she had put everything in place, she left for the Mayfair Motor Park in the town to board a bus going to Ibadan, where her family resides.
All things being equal, she should have been back in Ibadan by around 6pm on the same day, but by 12 midnight of the following day, she found herself in Ilorin, Kwara State.
Narrating the incident to our correspondent in Ibadan on Tuesday, she said, “We’ve been on strike for some weeks. Meanwhile, freshers had resumed three weeks before the strike, but due to the action, they were also sent back home. On July 23, I decided to go to school to check if my things were still intact and probably whether they had allocated my space (at Moremi Hall) to someone else. I got there and saw that my things had been scattered; my mattress had also been taken away with my buckets and other things, so I had to go round the rooms to gather them together. When I did that, I put them in my locker and locked them up.
“When I finished all that, I decided to return home and that was around 4pm. I had arrived in school by 11am. So I went to the Mayfair Motor Park in Ife to get a bus back to Ibadan. It’s a popular motor park in the town because it’s a public one. When I got there, there were only two passengers in the bus and the driver was hanging around somewhere. All the same, I entered the bus to wait until we had enough passengers to take off. As of 7pm, we were only nine in the 18-seater white Mazda bus. It was getting dark, so everyone started complaining. We begged the driver to take off and told him that while on the way, it was possible he would get more passengers. He agreed and we took off.”
Praise and other passengers were happy the driver heeded their pleas. Nothing in the driver’s appearance or the look of the bus suggested anything sinister. After all, they boarded the bus in a motor park, Praise thought.
The journey proceeded normally until the driver swerved off the major road. He told them it was a short-cut to Ibadan. But the path turned out to be a ‘long-cut.’
She continued, “There is a university outside Ife town called Oduduwa University. A few minutes drive past it, our driver said he wanted to pass through a short-cut. He said because it was weekend, there was traffic in front. So he took us through the route. When we turned to pass through the so-called short-cut, we saw a bus in front of us and there was another bus behind us. It was a bushy path, but we were not so afraid because of the other two buses which were also taking the route. We thought it was a route which would take us to Ibadan faster.
“As we were going through the path, we got to a junction where we saw that the bus which was in front of us was already parked. The passengers had disembarked. As we got there, we were also flagged down by a group of about five men; our driver stopped and he himself ordered us to get down. Everyone was shocked and we wondered what was happening, but nobody talked. We were all just looking. The bus behind us was also stopped and all of us passengers in the three buses were up to 40. They asked us to lie face down. At that point, I became afraid as I knew something was wrong. As I lay down, I quickly sent a message on my phone to my dad, reading, ‘Dad, I am held hostage and I don’t even know where we are. I think I am in danger. Please pray for me.’ I could use my phone to send the message because when they ordered us to lie down, the men went for a meeting at a nearby bush, together with our driver. My dad called me back after a few minutes, but I couldn’t pick it. The phone rang out. When they heard that my phone rang, they came back and collected my phone and others’. After collecting our phones, they went back to their meeting.
“After a while, they returned and surprisingly, they asked the passengers in my driver’s bus to get back in. They instructed our driver to go and ‘dismiss’ us off. I was afraid. I thought ‘dismissing us’ meant ‘killing us.’ Our driver looked disappointed, so he shouted at us to get in; he was now holding a gun. Everybody kept quiet. Then he drove away inside the bush till it was really dark. When it was around 10pm, he started dropping us one by one. He would drive for about 10 minutes, drop a passenger and give him or her their phone and bag, then drive for another 10 minutes, drop another passenger, and on and on like that. He would spread the phones out and ask the person to pick their phone. It finally got to my turn and I think I was the sixth passenger to be dropped, I can’t remember full well because at that point, I had become so confused.”
When Praise got out of the bus, it was then that it dawned on her that she was in another world, in the middle of a forest and the screech of insects. By then, tt was around 11pm.
“He stopped me at a T-junction and gave me my phones, but they were already dead, so I couldn’t contact anyone. When he dropped me, he told me I was at Share (Kwara State). I didn’t know where Share was then. It was very dark, around 11pm. The village was quiet. Anywhere I turned to, it was forest all around me. I got to know later that Share was very close to Niger State. It’s a border town between Kwara and Niger states,” she said.
Suddenly, in the midst of the the forest and darkness, she heard the sound of a motorcycle coming towards her direction.
She continued, “I flagged down the rider and he stopped. I asked him, ‘I was told this is Share. Please, where is the nearest town or somewhere where I can get help from?’ The man simply said, ‘Ilorin.’ I know Ilorin quite well because my grandparents stay there, I once schooled there and my aunt still lives there. I got on the motorcycle and he took me from the jungle to Ilorin. When he dropped me, I could recognise the area and found out that the place was actually close to my aunt’s house, around Basin area.
“I asked him how much I should pay him. He just nodded his head and zoomed off. He didn’t utter a word or ask for money. Meanwhile, I was lucky my phone came up again, so I quickly called my dad that I was in Ilorin and that I was near my aunt’s place. He quickly notified my aunt that I was coming.
“I was dumbfounded. From where the motorcyclist dropped me, I trekked to my aunt’s house for some minutes and when I got to the door, around 12 am on Sunday, I knocked. She was a bit scared because she was expecting no one. She asked who was knocking. I replied, ‘It’s me, Praise.’ She retorted, ‘Which Praise?’ I said, ‘Praise Adelakin.’ She asked again, ‘Praise Adelakin from where?’ We often talk and so she recognised my voice. She then said someone should open the gate for me. She just didn’t know what to do when she saw me in the middle of the night.”
In the morning of that Sunday, Praise’s parents came for her in Ilorin to take her back home. But up till now, she has yet to recover from the incident.
She said, “I wouldn’t know what happened to the other passengers in the two other buses. I’m still trying to get over it because I’m still scared of boarding buses right now. I used to enter any bus as long as I see people inside it, but my experience has taught me to be more conscious. I am still amazed. It was not the first time I would board a bus from the park, and it is even a public park. It wasn’t a lift.
“My parents came over to Ilorin to pick me up on Sunday to return to Ibadan. They said they immediately started praying for me when I sent them the message. They also told me they went to the police station in Ibadan and contacted another one in Ife to report the incident, but the police said they couldn’t do anything about it.
“The police said they should go to MTN office to track my phone to know where I was. MTN said they needed a police report, which the police couldn’t give because they didn’t know about the incident. Everything was complicated. They said they had to resort to prayers throughout the night. I just thank God I am still alive to tell this story. I don’t know what would have happened to the passengers in the two other buses. I will be back to school this weekend as the strike has been called off.”
Could she describe the driver, his conversation with his fellow suspected ritualists and the area they were taken to?
Praise said, “I didn’t hear their conversation because they really went far away, but they could still monitor us. They talked in low tones. I can’t really describe the area but I know it’s a few minutes’ drive after passing the Oduduwa University that he branched into the bush.
“Our driver was wearing an ankara dress that day; he has an average height and dark-complexioned. Except one old man, almost all other passengers were students. I suspect that the drivers of the other two buses too belong to the gang because they all held the meeting together.”
Praise’s father, Timothy Adelakin, who is a pastor, said when he received his daughter’s message that she was in danger that day, his heart jumped out.
He said, “I just thank God for how He acted in the situation. When she was about leaving Ife that day, she called to say she was returning home and I thought she should be home two hours later. We were attending a prayer meeting in the church; we were rounding off when her message came in that I should pray for her. She said they were held hostage and she didn’t know where they were.
“When I got her text, I told the church members what had happened. I called other pastor colleagues to pray for us. We prayed again till 11pm. Around midnight, her aunt called me and said, ‘Speak to Praise.’ The next voice I heard was hers. I was filled with joy.
“I would like the authorities to investigate this incident because it is surprising that a driver from a public park could do this. They must have been doing it before. Praise told me the passengers of their bus and the two other buses were mostly students, so I am worried what would have happened to her colleagues. I have already instructed her never to board private cars and she doesn’t do it. But with something like this happening in a public park, it is worrisome.”
Meanwhile, Saturday PUNCH learned that the Mayfair motor park closes by 4pm and vehicles no longer load passengers from the park after this time.
The Chairman of the National Union of Road Transport Workers, Ife 1 Branch, Mr. Gbadegesin Asiyanbi, when visited at the park, said Praise could not have boarded the bus from inside the park at the time she got there.
Asiyanbi said activities at the park close by 4pm, after which any driver is allowed to pick passengers on the road irrespective of where they come from.
He said, “There are no kidnappers in our motor park. I have never heard of anything like that. There is no way such thing can happen, we know ourselves, our members are true drivers.
“We lower our flag by 4pm and as you can see for yourself now (around 5:30pm when
Saturday PUNCH visited on Thursday), there are no vehicles on queue, so anybody who boarded a vehicle between 6pm and 7pm here and is claiming they boarded it from our park is either ignorant or telling lies.”
Credit - The Punch
Why You May Consider Disposing Your BlackBerry Phone Before 2016 Ends
By Adetula David
If you say Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook has placed Blackberry on a time-bomb of irrelevance, you may not be totally far from the truth though no one knows the last card Blackberry has in stock to play to salvage its ‘dignity’.
During the first quarter of this year (2016), it was announced that WhatsApp and Facebook will no longer support Blackberry Operating System (OS), including Blackberry 10. WhatsApp was the first to cut support in an official announcement on February 26 this year. According to a Release commemorating WhatsApp seventh year anniversary, it saw the need to develop with the fast developing interface of mobile devices, hence, the need for WhatsApp to look ahead to the next seven years and focus more on the mobile platforms the vast majority of people use.
“As we look ahead to our next seven years, we want to focus our efforts on the mobile platforms the vast majority of people use. So, by the end of 2016, we will be ending support for WhatsApp Messenger on the following mobile platforms: BlackBerry, including BlackBerry 10, Nokia S40, Nokia Symbian S60, Android 2.1 (Éclair) and Android 2.2 (Froyo) as well as Windows Phone 7.1” the Release stated.
The simple reason given for this is that the future expansion of the app’s features cannot be contained by the capabilities of those devices.
Just about a month later, Facebook also announced that it will also drop support for BlackBerry making it almost hard for any person willing to manage the first straw think twice and deeply. With this, it means BlackBerry users will have to use the mobile version of the website to log on the social network.
In a reaction to the development, one of BlackBerry’s officials said it is extremely disappointed with Facebook’s decision to discontinue support for its app. Even as the WhatsApp support to BlackBerry and the above listed platforms is billed to end by 2016, no specific period has been stated for the Facebook support to end, though there are insights that both supports may be terminated at the same time.
For BlackBerry users, we do hope that you will find this development manageable else you may consider disposing your BB phones before the value drastically drops by 2016 end.
If you say Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook has placed Blackberry on a time-bomb of irrelevance, you may not be totally far from the truth though no one knows the last card Blackberry has in stock to play to salvage its ‘dignity’.
During the first quarter of this year (2016), it was announced that WhatsApp and Facebook will no longer support Blackberry Operating System (OS), including Blackberry 10. WhatsApp was the first to cut support in an official announcement on February 26 this year. According to a Release commemorating WhatsApp seventh year anniversary, it saw the need to develop with the fast developing interface of mobile devices, hence, the need for WhatsApp to look ahead to the next seven years and focus more on the mobile platforms the vast majority of people use.
“As we look ahead to our next seven years, we want to focus our efforts on the mobile platforms the vast majority of people use. So, by the end of 2016, we will be ending support for WhatsApp Messenger on the following mobile platforms: BlackBerry, including BlackBerry 10, Nokia S40, Nokia Symbian S60, Android 2.1 (Éclair) and Android 2.2 (Froyo) as well as Windows Phone 7.1” the Release stated.
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| Photo credit: bidnessetc.com |
Just about a month later, Facebook also announced that it will also drop support for BlackBerry making it almost hard for any person willing to manage the first straw think twice and deeply. With this, it means BlackBerry users will have to use the mobile version of the website to log on the social network.
In a reaction to the development, one of BlackBerry’s officials said it is extremely disappointed with Facebook’s decision to discontinue support for its app. Even as the WhatsApp support to BlackBerry and the above listed platforms is billed to end by 2016, no specific period has been stated for the Facebook support to end, though there are insights that both supports may be terminated at the same time.
For BlackBerry users, we do hope that you will find this development manageable else you may consider disposing your BB phones before the value drastically drops by 2016 end.
Friday, 5 August 2016
Admissions Office Commences Transcript Collection For OAU DE Candidates
Upon a visit to the Obafemi Awolowo University Admissions office today, some members of OAU Peeps News Agency have been able to learn that the submission of transcripts for Direct Entry applicants for the 2016/2017 academic session has begun.
However, due to the heavy workload in the department consequential to the recent resumption of the fresh students of the institution, our correspondents were unable to gather the precise deadline of submission from the staff of the admissions office but more findings and enquiries are already being made towards this cause and the date shall be announced soon. But in the meantime, Candidates who have undergone the online screening can go ahead to submit their official transcripts at the Admissions Office.
Thursday, 4 August 2016
“Respected Evil Perpetrators As Well As Human Serpents To Change Or Else Steer Clear Of Me” – OAU Acting VC
The acting Vice Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University, Professor Anthony Elujoba has warned members of the University Senate who have a different agenda from his, to change or steer clear of him as he takes the University back to path.
Last week Thursday, while Elujoba addressed members of the Senate, he told them that his 6-month period, which he has to act as the Vice Chancellor will be remarkable for the institution.
Here is the full text of the Vice Chancellor’s speech at the Senate meeting.
Distinguished members of Senate, ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you all to this special Senate Meeting. I salute you with a heart of gratitude and hope, that in spite of the unique challenges of our time, we have all united to reposition the university and move forward to greater glory. I thank you ALL especially for the confidence you reposed in me in facilitating my appointment as Acting Vice-Chancellor to serve our great university for the next 6 months. I salute you all, distinguished members of this Senate, for your tenacity, abiding faith and love for this great University. Also, to formally salute the great men and women of vision, the forerunners that have selflessly nurtured this institution on the tortuous and sometimes traumatizing journey of leadership and institution building. More often, it was at great personal costs. We are now on the path to a re-positioning of our University to reach the height of greater progress, rebuilding and mending our broken fences in order to leap in bounds of greater achievements. Our common journey to victory is to consciously protect the ideals and legacies bestowed on us by our fore-runners.
Ladies and gentlemen of Senate, this is not the right time for long speeches or jubilation but time for swift actions that bring dividends of institutional change and progress. You will agree with me that this change has to be swift, drastic and radical and must be fast-tracked with all our available resources both human and material at our disposal. The Great Change in OAU needs to be on-board: to stabilize the university, in terms of restoring the culture of inclusiveness and transparency in governance that respects our collegial enterprise, stable academic calendar, attaining industrial peace, peaceful and conducive environment that will enhance the university’s mission of teaching, learning, research and social engineering services to the community, a culture of prompt release of students’ examination results, to encourage and sustain self-uprightness and diligence at work, to restore our good image and the public confidence, among others. Therefore, as a joint workforce, let’s put the past behind us but together approach the next 6 months as the dawn of a new day and new beginning with vigour, in unity, TRUTH, FAITH, love, full of hope and expectations. I am not a 5-year-tenure Vice-Chancellor, the 6-month-Acting status has merely made me the head of a transition to which all other staff belong as transition officers. On your behalf therefore, and in the interest of the university, I will fearlessly attempt all the changes that glorify the life of this institution in fairness, TRUTH and justice. While by the grace of God, I will work tirelessly to restore the integrity, sanctity and vibrancy of the university system and to ensure that our working environment is safe and congenial to effective teaching and productive scholarship, yet all these are not achievable without your prayers and support. I therefore humbly beg for genuine and honest support from all of you; I believe we are all in agreement that our greatness lies in unity of purpose.
Meanwhile, I have plans to seek to gather the main lessons derivable from the last unfortunate episode that brought the university to where we are today and make recommendations to prevent similar occurrences in the future. I have FAITH in our capacity to use our hard-earned AUTONOMY (if rightly applied), to an advantage in choosing the next Vice-Chancellor without any dilemma. It is not greatness nor popularity that our dear university is known to shut-down for periods almost longer than it has remained open for academic and intellectual work nor will it enhance our good ranking! Therefore, I have plans to raise a group of intellectual helpers that will research into immediate and remote causes of incessant closure and provide appropriate recommendations to the university. By the grace of God, I am going to use task-force tools within and outside Senate to do these many onerous assignments before us to move our university forward within the shortest possible time; I believe every member of this respectable body will kindly take this cross and follow me as I face the fire of temporary leadership and like the truthful story, there is an invisible forth group behind us that will turn-on the air conditioners to lessen the heat of the fire. Yes, I can be assisted with suggestions and proposals of how to run this 6-month period successfully from kind-hearted women and men (which all of you are).
Honourable ladies and gentlemen of Senate, please let the interest of our great university prevail so that we can leave our memorable footsteps in the sand of time. I humbly appeal to pseudo-helpers, sycophants, schemers, divide-and-rule, unexpected and respected evil perpetrators as well as human serpents to change or else steer clear of me. Please join me in praying for the success of our collective efforts. There is hardly enough time for all things to be achieved but the most mandatory assignment on which to dedicate all the 6 months is to create the all-enabling environment to usher-in a credible selection of the next substantive VC as well as provide proper and credible records to submit to the in-coming Council. I will do all within the available material and financial resources to reduce the inevitable but temporary pains of rebuilding on all of us the stakeholders, especially staff and students.
Distinguished colleagues, I want to leave you with a plea that as Senate members, we continue to provide bold, strategic, stable and imaginative leadership in our different academic domains, conduct the business of Senate, and all meetings for that matter, with promptness, timeliness and determination. For nothing other than this can portray us as leaders of the academic enterprise with the capacity to drive the University into the attainment of its lofty ideals.
Finally, as a person, I foresee that the challenges before us cannot be removed on a bed of roses. I am in an unusual situation and in some unavoidable circumstances, things will therefore be handled as such. I strongly believe that our university is again at the epoch of a greater tomorrow and I am confident that by the end of the 6 months, we would have crossed-over from darkness into light and from the tunnel into freedom,. Only with God and your support shall there be success.
Thank you for listening and may God bless you all.
