UNIUYO FEMALE HOSTEL: The need for improved hygiene and Security BY GLORY ODOEMELAN

The University of Uyo is located along Ikpa road with campuses within the Main and Annex locations. The third campus of the school is situated in Nwaniba, where the Permanent Site is located.

Each campus has a number of hostels provided to give shelter, accommodation and rest to students after a day’s exhausting activities. It provides a good option for both campus dwellers and outsiders by reason of its closeness to the Lecture Venues.

It is noteworthy that the female hostels within the school are more than the male hostels. The only male hostel for the two campuses, “M2” was built two years ago and can comfortably accommodate the male students. The other two, which are situated at Udi and Udo streets, are also accommodative but distant from the school.

The need for hostels within the school premises cannot be over emphasised because the on-campus hostels provide a level of security for students.
The female hostels in the Town and Annex campus are eight in number. A breakdown of this shows that five of the hostels are in the Town campus, three of them in the Annex campus, while the permanent site can boast of two female hostels.

With rooms counting up to sixty each in some Halls, accommodation is guaranteed for students who wish to live on campus. Female students are allocated different rooms according to their levels. The school gives top bunks to Year 1 and 2 female students while the down and single bunks are allocated to Year 3 and 4 female students respectively. Again, accommodation allocation is highly preferential to freshers and the finalists who apply for it.

Getting an accommodation in the hostel is easy and affordable. Students are simply given a form to apply for a space at the end of a session. At the commencement of the next session, an allocation list comes out, directing students to pay a substantial amount of money.
It is however pertinent to note that the female hostels, built and inhabited for a couple of years, have begun to wear-off due to lack of maintenance. Some of the walls are cracked with traces of and moss and algae growing comfortably on them.

Some Louvers are either broken or completely off as a result of students’ carelessness over the years; some window nets are either torn or off as well; and the floors have deep holes in them accommodating rats and other creeping things. Most hostels do not even have proper wardrobes, but improvised wooden planks nailed to the wall for students to hang their clothes and towels.

Apart from the stress of sharing a room and a bunk with total strangers, the female students also have to deal with the unhygienic and unhealthy living conditions in the hostels. It is understandable that hostels are public domains, habited by students of different backgrounds, not everyone knows the tenets of a clean environment. It is therefore expected of the school to create a healthy atmosphere to allow for the excellent performance of the students. That is the purpose of this feature – to re-emphasize the need for healthy atmosphere and improved security in University of Uyo female hostels.

A healthy environment ensures that students’ health and academic performance does not suffer. A healthy environment consists of clean drinking water, neat walls and floors, clean waste baskets, clean toilets and bathrooms, well-mowed lawns, well stacked stores, functioning ceiling fans, clean and firm ropes for spreading clothes after laundry, frequent electricity, firm and neat mattresses, functioning wardrobes, window nets and a number of other facilities to compliment the boisterous school system.
Most of the female hostels are plagued with cracks and holes on the walls and are due for repainting, especially the one referred to as “Prefab”. This particular one is built with wood and is prone to being rusticated by termites and other parasites. Infact, only Hall 3B has been rebuilt to a standard after it was razed down in 2009, and since then, nothing significant has been done to improve the physical condition of the remaining three hostels, except Hall 4 of the Annex Campus which has also been refurbished.

Some students have complained of bad bunks and dirty or torn mattresses. Most of the mattresses the school provides for the students are nothing to write home about. They are either so flat or torn in different parts such that most students return to school with their own bed covers to make the mattress a bit pleasant.

In some rooms, the fans are either not functioning or are mal-functioning so that students have to buy their own standing fans in order to battle the heat.
The same thing goes for the bathroom and toilet of some hostels which are not well managed at all. Though the school has employed the services of cleaners to put the loo in order, these persons hardly do their jobs and thus, expose students to the possibility of contacting infections ranging from bacteria to yeast, rashes, germs and other contactable diseases.
Some toilets in the female hostel are not flushable at all and some of the seats and handles are broken. The showers in the bathroom are not functioning, the drainages there are blocked and the floors are often flooded.

The lawns in some of the hostels are most times, left to overgrow for a long time and this could attract snakes and other reptiles to the hostel premises. The ropes provided by the school are of course worn out and very thin.

Apart from all these, there is also the issue of insecurity. The school needs to take into cognisance the need to improve security in the female hostels so that the students can be assured of their safety.
On the morning of the June 12 student riot of 2013, a “window man” was caught stealing phones and was reportedly dragged round the school amidst jeers by the female students. Prior to that day, there had been reports of torn nets and missing phones, laptops and other gadgets. The method usually employed is tearing the window net and using a stick to shift the phones from their positions to a point where they can reach out for it with their hands. Stealing this way is usually very easy because there are very little or no safety measures taken to ensure that students’ properties are safe.

The importance of security in a school environment must not be over looked. Little has been done to improve the situation. However, the efforts of security approaches in Hall 6A and B must be commended. Iron protectors have been built around the windows of the halls and Barb wire mounted on the fence of the school where the hostel is located. All the looks of the doors were changed and padlocks replaced. But the work should not stop just in Hall 6 alone. The school should endeavour to barricade every hostel with strong iron protectors and these gates should be locked and well guarded, especially at nights. The school should make available patrol vehicles to enable security men patrol the entire school at night to keep an eye on dubious or suspicious activities occurring especially in the wee hours of the morning.

The students on their part should develop the habit of reporting suspicious people and activities to the school authorities for appropriate actions.

Building a healthy atmosphere in Uniuyo female hostels is one task the school must embark on. Since the “prefab” hostels were built in the 1962, no significant action has been made to suggest that those wooden structures would be taken down anytime soon.
As for other female hostels, the school should take steps to renew their looks, change the structures that need to be changed and every irregularity mentioned earlier should be addressed so as to create room for a healthy environment.

It is imperative to emphasize that creating a healthy learning atmosphere in Uniuyo female hostels is an important step in ensuring that students’ performances and health do not suffer. Female students should also be encouraged to build and maintain cordial, harmonious and benefiting relationships amongst themselves. By organizing periodic talk shows, discussions, quizzes, and debates on the maintenance of hostel facilities and structures, students will develop self-concern for their environment, develop responsibility for their possessions and will properly be interested in what goes on around them. This will to an extent, help to curb the challenges of insecurity as well as sustain developments.