We finally won!

To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. - Sun Tzu

Just after two days of a massive protest, the vice-chancellor of my school have finally back down. Just in case you don't know what happened, read the full details from here: Massive protest at my school, but I will just provide a summary.

The vice-chancellor (VC) of my school increased the school feee by over 44% for those that haven't paid and she called it "late payment fee". This happened just barely after four weeks we resumed.

The students didn't take it likely with the VC and staged a full-blown protest. The VC never expected it to be huge, and I bet she was shocked to see the large scale of the protest.

The funny thing is there was nobody to hold responsible because the protest had no leader! Looks like we learned something from last year's endsars protest.

Let me give you a breakdown of how things would have been if the protest was led by the student union government.

• First off, the president of the student union will take control of the protest and assign other executive members to various strategic locations on campus to lead other protests.

• Some members of the student union executives get summoned by the school's senate and are accused of trying to sabotage the VC's administration and cause unrest in the school.

• They are faced with expulsion from the school, this puts fear in the other members of the student union, who then start making plans to rescue their colleagues.

• The protest falls apart as a majority of the energy is now being channeled into helping to prevent the student union executives from getting expelled.

• After the whole saga, the executives return and say they have reached a compromise with the school's management. The ₦20,000 increment has been reduced to ₦10,000. And that ends the protest.

This has happened before and could have also happened now if the protest had a leader, but we are wiser now.

The situation of things in school

I went around school today and things seem to be recovering slowly. No lectures are going on for now and a few students can be seen moving around.

When the protest started, the school management released a memo that the university will be shut down indefinitely, so right now we are still waiting for another memo for its reopening, which will probably be next week.

Many of us were confused on if lectures will hold today because technically the protest has ended and school activities were supposed to resume after. That's one of the reasons why I went to school today and I also had to go pay for a course registration fee at the bank.

Thank God I decided to go pay for the course registration fee today, I have heard that there is always a long queue of people trying to pay for the course at the bank and it will take hours before it gets to my turn.

I figured since a lot of persons aren't going to school today, then the bank will be empty and I was right! I arrived at the bank and there were just about 5 or 6 persons there. I completed the transaction within 20 minutes and I went back to tease my friends who spent hours in the queue.

We would have continued with the protest if the issue wasn't resolved, and the protest would have gone out of hand. Some sets of persons that were protesting at the VC's lodge disconnected her electricity and water supply 😂 she didn't know the set of students she was messing with.

I saw a video of the VC sneaking out of her office and a crowd ran after her. Security had to quickly help her into her vehicle and they drove off before the crowd arrived. I don't think they would have done anything to her, but they will confront her one on one.

She finally had to come out to address the students because she knew we wouldn't have given up until she removed the extra charges she added to the school fees.

I am really happy with the way the protest went and it shows that we are strong when we are united. The university doesn't belong to the VC, it belongs to the students and we are the university.

Image credit: Office photo created by mdjaff - www.freepik.com

Right now we have learned the proper way of holding protests; have no leader. I'm pretty sure the school's management will tread carefully from now on and will carefully think about any policy before it's implemented.

Thanks for reading

September 16, 2021

Lead Image credit: Background photo created by jcomp - www.freepik.com