When you ask students which school is the most stressful, surely each and everyone would call their individual schools. Sadly I know if they were to rank schools and stress in Nigeria, Uniport would carry the trophy hands down.
The University of Port Harcourt is a federal university in Rivers state, being a federal university it is involved actively in previous and this ongoing ASUU strike. Surely every Nigerian and maybe most non-nigerians know about this infamous trend between the schools and government. The ASUU committee choosing a particular year to bring up promises left unkept by Federal government, expressing their angers in the form of no labour, thus leaving us the students to fend for ourselves. Then the government making more promises to ASUU about how their trying their best to keep such promises and the dance goes on and on for decades, with the strike going for months, the students have an even bigger fallout in education and overall life.
Now this great school is quite famous for the strikes, although I don't know why😂. Being a student of this institution has taught me the true meaning of stress. Having 2 sets of Year 1 or Freshmen due to the backlog of COVID 19 and a previous strike. This school knowing the strike is still on puts, their name to accept students. Thus bringing in another set of Year 1's making us 3 in total. That's 3 sets of students, while a set is more than 8,000 individuals. It makes me dread when classes would resume.
Now I had a taste of what resumption would be like as this great institution did something so completely unexpected or crazy that it can't even be real.
The school sent messages on the 13th to Course representatives that the registration process of students now has a deadline of 17 September 2022. Now note that without completing your registration, you can't get your Matriculation number and you can't write exams. This coming from a school still on strike seems bizarre and unrealistic, for what of students in other states, that it takes at least 3 days to reach school, would they have to fly? Bit then that thought comes into your head, "What if it is real?". With this thought in mind I carried my sorry self to this school and was shocked.
The amount of student's present was intimidating, in my mind I was like are these only Year 1 students. I guess I'm not the only one that thought of the truth factor of the message. Yet these students can't be all the Yr 1's because I know specifically about 10 people who hadn't made it yet. They say the worst part about University entering is the registration and I could testify to that. The labour system for a federal school (school funded by a government) is so poor that you could waste all your time and resources in a single segment that you wouldn't have finished the whole process in a week. Yet they want all students to do it? At the end you'll feel like you've been wrestled to the floor and pinned by the sheer weight of time and money lost.
Image taken with my phone. Statue in front of Zenith bank, Uniport
Getting to school by 8:00AM and staying till 6:00PM without doing a single thing was a real deal breaker for me. Apparently the person in charge of the last part of the registration decided she was tired 3:00PM after coming by 1:00PM.
Most students began begging her but I decided it's best to spend my time exploring the school and seeing what had changed. (Of course this is because I've already gotten my Matriculation number 😂.) I found out they've repainted the gate and done a little bit of refurbishing here and there. This had me thinking is the strike almost over? Is Uniport thinking of pulling out? Or did they just decide to use some students school fee's 😂
Repainted Tetfund Class hall
Repainted School Gate, Delta park entrance
Now if Uniport actually decides to pull out of the strike it would be a tough experience because of the exams around the corner for those who were in exam period before the strike and those who joined the same class would they still write the exam?
Although that's a thought process based on IF they pull out of the strike. Another news is I heard was that during the strike period, students hostels where robbed and valuables collected, it was a sad one as I know some friends who lest things in the hostels.
As I got home I've been on my bed since, just decided to get up and write about my experience. So if you're writing JAMB next year and you see Uniport at the Universities list, know what your getting into. For this is Uniport where stress, debit and strike move in a Trinity, know what your getting into.
All pictures were taken by me with my Vivo Y1 smartphone.
