From Olanike Orebe-Olawole
The Management of the Federal University Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE) has described as fallacious, mischievous, misleading and libelious a report alleging dearth of toilet facilities on the twin campuses of Oye-Ekiti and Ikole-Ekiti of the institution, saying it was a deliberate act to bring to disrepute the good image of the Ivory Tower.
In a statement co-signed by Wole Balogun, Special Adviser On Media Matters to the Vice-Chancellor (VC), and Foluso Ogunmodede, Chief Information Officer to the VC, the Management said: “Our attention has been drawn to a fallacious report in a national online newspaper, which was also given elaborate review on some private radion stations, alleging that there were no toilet facilities on the campuses of the Federal University Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE).
” While we strongly deny this report and categorically describe it as mischievous, fallacious and libelious, we make bold to say that it was deliberately written to bring to disrepute the amazing reputation of our great Citadel of Learning. We therefore frown seriously at the shallow research conducted by the Reporters in the course of their investigation as grossly evident in the said report.
“Before delving into the issues in focus, we wish to bring to public knowledge some misrepresentations that are contained in the mischievous report, which render it fallacious.
” First of all, conducting an investigation on availability of toilet facilities with just one faculty in an environment as big as FUOYE with 11 faculties, is myopic. The Reporters ought to have visited at least five or more of the 11 faculties to get a broader idea of the massive toilet facilities we have in FUOYE.
“Secondly, Dr. Harry Olufunwa is not the current Sub-Dean of the Faculty of Arts as erroneously indicated in the fallacious report. The current Sub-Dean of the Faculty is Dr. (Mrs.) Lilian Bakare and she has assumed that position for more than a year now. The deduction to make out of the foregoing shortcomings in the report is that the Reporters didn’t have a proper understanding of the envrionment they did their purported investigative journalism and that is disheartening. Another viable dedution that could be made out of the disappointing excercise is that it is possible these reporters wrote their report out of mere imaginations inspired by the rumours they heard about the facilities in the University. Worse still, the report may have been sponsored by some disgruntled elements unhappy with the widespread acceptability and giant strides the new Vice-Chancellor and his management team have recorded with the short time they assumed office. In other words, the report maybe nothing more than a hacthet job. The reporters therefore ended up spreading fake news at such a time the Federal Government frowns at it and making conciuos effort to effect legal measures to curtail such irresponsible reporting.
The Reporters were very unfair to FUOYE by failing to get a larger and true picture of our massive toilet facilities by failing to reach out to a broader spectrum of students and their governing bodies, notably the Students Union Government (SUG). They also failed to reach out to the Management of the University or the media Unit to get their views and properly balance the report. Instead, they cited only two cases which allegedly happened over three years ago.
The reporters cited some names of students they claimed to have interviewed and also qouted them, but it is doubtful if they actually interviewed real students of FUOYE because of the obvious misrepresentation eralier revealed about their report.
Now to the Cruz of the matter, the report erroneously gave an impression that FUOYE lacks adequate toilet facilities. It reads in part: “Since 2011 when it was established, FUOYE has not provided toilet facilities for students across its faculties.”
This is not true, because in the faculty of Arts alone which incidentally the Reporters used as yardstick for their faulty assessment, there are 32 toilet facilities!
At the annex of the Faculty of Arts, which is in phase two of our Oye-Ekiti campus, the Theatre and Media Arts departmental complex, there are well over 20 toilet facilities. One then wonders where these reporters got their own data from, obviously from their own imaginations.
It is also not true that these toilet facilities are not released for students’use. Far from it. Students were assigned toilets with the keys kept with their Welfare Officers. This arose when we realized that on several occasions many students use hard papers and even pad to block the available ones.
Truth is that apart from very timely and generous provision of these facilities by the University Management, we have cases where staff members also go out of their way to make sacrficial provisions for the University. A case in point is the benevolence shown by the current Dean, Faculty of Arts, Prof. Tajudeen Bolanle Opoola who spent roughly N150,000 of his money to provide boreholes for the faculty to complement the water facility already provided by the Management.
As a matter of fact, FUOYE has very generous provision of toilet facilities and these are made available to students through their welfare officers.
We also wish to give accurate picture of our generous toilet facilities in some faculties for the records.
Currently, FUOYE’s Faculty of Engineering in Ikole-Ekiti has 72 toilet facilities, Faculty of Science in Oye-Ekiti also has 72; just as the 500 seater capacity auditorium of Faculty of science also has eight toilets attached to it.
In the same vein, at the Faculty of Social Sciences in phase three, there are also 12 toilet facilities and all these are functional and assessible to students. Our new Faculty of Pharmacy complex equally boasts of 32 functional toilet facilities, so also does the Faculty of Management Sciences. All toilet facilities in our Faculty of agriculture are working and very much assessible to all students of the faculty.
As a matter of fact, the Management recently approved the construction of 50 additional units of public toilet facilities for the twin campuses in Oye-Ekiti and Ikole-Ekiti. So, we urge the members of the public to ignore this mischievous report making the rounds. It is not only pitiably shallow but tragically fallacious,” it said..
