Fifty UNN students to face disciplinary committee over hostel racketeering

• He said the university is making efforts within the available resources to provide best accommodation to its students
  

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Fifty students from the University of Nigeria are to be presented before the university’s disciplinary committee due to their involvement in hostel racketeering.

As reported by THE WHISTLER, Prof. Edwin Omeje, the Dean of Students’ Affairs at the university, has revealed that certain students have been obtaining hostel accommodations and reselling them at inflated rates.

“About fifty students have been identified and will soon face the university disciplinary committee. They pay N25, 000 and advertise their rooms at over N150, 000. It is wickedness and against the university ethics.”

He said the university is making efforts within the available resources to provide best accommodation to its students.

According to him, “Fund is scarce. The VC is passionate about accommodation for our students. With the consent of the Governing Council, an agreement was entered into with a firm that is doing about 13, 000 standard bed spaces for us at Nsukka campus.

“The project is the first of its kind in the whole country. It is the same in Enugu campus where we have the presidential hostels that are almost being completed.

“Recently the VC secured a Tetfund hostel project. It is being roofed. In a short moment, hostel accommodation scarcity at Nsukka campus would have been reduced drastically. Note also that our hostels, apart from the PG hostel which we changed from Nkruma to Odili, were built in 1960s.”

On the cost of maintaining the hostels, he said, “The university IGR cannot maintain these buildings. What it takes us to take a student in a hostel for ten months is about N200, 000. It is a conservative estimate. This university pays a bill of N80m for electricity every month.

We have a 1500KVA generator that gulps a drum of diesel an hour.

“There is another one at Franco that gulps same. The alternative energy is still very expensive. Honestly, it is the uninformed that will tackle the university instead of encouraging it in its efforts to provide conducive learning environment for our students.”