Unforgettable UNILAG: ‘So Poor, I Begged For Food’ -The Mike Awoyinfa Column

After hurriedly devouring his 403-page memoir titled POWERED BY POVERTY—A story of Adversity, Ambition, Diligence and Triumph, I couldn’t help sending Chief Lawson A. Omokhodion a note saying: “Your book—POWERED BY POVERTY—is an unputdownable, evocative, candid, well-crafted goldmine of information for everyone: journalists, biographers, managers, economists, historians, corporate strategists and human angle news hunters like me.  You have simply raised the bar for memoirs, autobiographies and travelogues.  Well done.”

Chief Omokhodion popularly called “Omo Law” in our university days, shares a lot in common with me.  Just one day separates us.  I was born on Wednesday, July 23, 1952 and he was born on Friday, July 25, 1952.  He attended the University Lagos where he read Mass Communication.  I also attended University of Lagos, where I read Mass Communication.  We both made Second Class Upper.  In reading his memoir, I was partly reading my own story and drawing inspiration to write mine.  I hope to bring you two or three excerpts from this captivating memoir.  Here is a piece titled Young and Restless which captures vignettes of our famous Mass Communication Department at UNILAG.

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The Mass Communication Department in UNILAG was a very special part of the university.  The department harboured students with the best HSC results from their different schools.  To be admitted to study Mass Communication in my time, the student must have completed the HSC programme with a minimum of nine points.  It was unlike other courses in the university where students could either do a four-year course through preliminary entry or three years through direct entry, irrespective of the quality of the HSC result.  The only one-year programme in Mass Communication Department was the Diploma programme, an adult programme only open to media men and women who are admitted based on cognate experience in communication media professions.  However, there were instances where a very high performance in the Diploma programme gave such students a direct entry into the degree programme itself.  The Mass Communication degree was a tough programme and adequate mental preparation in a prior programme that relied on self-motivation was needed.  It was initially called Institute of Mass Communication and was housed on the top floor of the University of Lagos Library complex.  The Institute was supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).  Many of the lecturers were experts seconded from these world bodies.  Mass Communication students were proud to be so privileged in UNILAG.  Being so vibrant and cerebral, they were very active in campus matters.  The Institute became a department in 1973 and was later relocated to the famous ‘white house,’ the present site of the Department.

Academic life in Mass Communication department was quite rigorous.  The lecturers were dedicated experts in communication.  Our first Head of Department, Dr. Fred Omu, followed by Professor Alfred Opubor, were distinguished academics.  At the Department, I met the famous Olu Fadeyibi who was in the third and final year of the degree programme.  Fadeyibi was rascality personified and I knew I was in the right place.  In the first year, in addition to electives from other Departments, we were taught the French Language and typing skills, amongst other core Mass Communication subjects.  The well-equipped French Language laboratory gave students a good environment to learn the language.  Mrs. Dada was the Department’s Secretary.  She taught students the rudiments of typing, a skill that remains with me to date.  In my first year, I studied Functional English, Communication Techniques, French, Nigerian History, Communication Theory, and Elements of Sociology.  The university system in my time relied on almighty June to determine the pass or fail status of the students.  Students had to be examined on whatever was taught in the first, second and third terms in the period of May/June, which was the third term of the academic year.  Students who were carried away by apparently easy-going first and second term in the academic year always had it rough in the third term.

Anyway, the first term of my first year was rather uneventful as I took the opportunity to understand the campus environment.  I was allocated a bed space in El Kanemi Hall, a men’s hall then known as Hall 3.  I was glad to be in the same hall as Olu Fadeyibi.  I was in Room 343.  Officially, we were four students in a room.  During the day, only four beds would be seen in the room.  At night, as soon as students returned from the library and were ready to go to bed, camp beds and mattresses of various descriptions always appeared.  The number of occupants in the room would increase dramatically to 12 or more.  The owners of the camp beds and mattresses were known as squatters and, in the tradition of UNILAG, every student had to be a squatter at one time or the other.  The official policy was that all first year and final year students would be accommodated in the university hostels and other students were asked to fend for themselves.  The lesson was clear that whenever any student had the privilege of being allocated a bed space in the hall of residence, that student must be ready to harbour a squatter, the same way he would be harboured in future.  Every UNILAG student took this lesson to heart and squatting was as much a part of the university as the academic life itself.  Following closely the problem of squatting was that of feeding.  Student had to buy tickets for their meals.  The meals were sumptuous.  A variety of balanced diet, beverages, and fruit cocktails to match.  The cost of breakfast was 10 kobo.  Lunch and dinner were 25 kobo each.  Yet, I hardly had money to feed.  My feeding money ran out in October 1973.  I had to survive by begging the university kitchen staff or friends or by simply forcing my way to take food without paying for it.  In El Kanemi Hall, many students resolved the feeding challenge by devising different strategies to eat in the university dining hall…

In June 1974, a major scandal known as ‘Owosho scandal’ broke out in UNILAG.  Mr. Owosho was a deputy registrar in UNILAG.  Internal investigations by the university in collaboration with the West African Examination Council (WAEC), revealed that Mr. Owosho had assisted many students to gain admission into the university by using forged results.  He was immediately sacked.  Overnight, names of hundreds of students who had gained admission with such forged results were posted on the notice boards.  In a twinkle, several of our roommates, classmates, boys, girls, friends, and colleagues had to pack their bag and baggage out of the university.  Many of my friends from the Delta side of the old Midwest State were affected.  Generally, a good number retook their examinations and got grades good enough to earn admission into other universities in later years.

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