Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between Majesty and Decay in a Nigerian University: OAU and the Challenge of Nigerian Universities

Dear Oluwatoyin,

There are more lines that are not factual.

Most of the lines have extreme descriptions.

Most buildings need a touch of maintenance, I agree; but, it is not that MOST BUILDINGS NEED TO BE TORN DOWN AND REBUILT. A few buildings that have not been occupied for some time in the staff quarters need rehabilitation, that's more like it.

There are layers of landscaping in relation to maintainability in large scale built environment systems ranging from high maintenance inner central formal landscape  through medium maintenance informal landscapes away from the inner core to low maintenance informal landscapes on the outskirts. It is true that landscape maintenance management is poorer now than the days of the first Vice Chancellor Hezekiah Oluwasanmi who the library is named after and the Parks and Gardens unit has gone moribund. Also, the University not being in session due to the protracted strike may have contributed to the total lack of attention. However, I still think you need to tone down your description. Most of what feels like the unkempt forest is actually the low maintenance landscape that contributes to the natural setting of the campus. The burial grounds should be of medium maintenance but we are so carefree these days about  maintenance that even the formal landscapes are not adequately maintained these days. 

My summary is that our maintenance culture is terrible and "campus managers" within and without prefer to embark on new projects rather than pay attention to maintaining and conserving the old. Actually in the case of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria many people are not aware that it is important to the history of modern architecture. The campus was designed by Bauhaus trained Israeli Architect- Arieh Sharon- who was in the first set of the Bauhaus Architecture School in Germany. He is a protege of Walter Gropius and Hannes Meyer. We are presently rounding up a Getty Keep-It-Modern 2020 Conservation Management Plan Project that provides a framework for facility maintenance of the core of the campus designed and executed by Arieh Sharon and cohorts  between 1962 and 1980.

Please let's express our criticism without exaggeration.

Thank you.

Babatunde JAIYEOBA

E. Babatunde JAIYEOBA PhD

Professor of Architecture

Department of Architecture

Faculty of Environmental Design and Management

Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria

ebjaiye@oauife.edu.ng; tundejaiyeoba@yahoo.co.uk; +234 8037880023

On Thu, Oct 13, 2022 at 9:47 PM Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:

Apologies.

The following line is not factual:

"The staff quarters have the look of a ghetto."

The landscape of the staff quarters is wonderful, but more attention to the vegetation around a good no of the houses is needed and a good number of the houses are in urgent need of refurbishing.

Thanks

Toyin

On Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 11:59 Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:

Right now, I'm physically exploring one of the most impactful universities in Nigerian history, Obafemi Awolowo University. 

A combination of majesty and degeneration.

Sublime natural environment and glorious buildings, but buildings badly in need of maintenance, inconsistent management of vegetation, leading to well kept lawns coexisting with bushes.

In my view, almost all the buildings in the staff quarters should  be torn down and rebuilt.

The staff quarters have the look of a ghetto.

Yet this is the university of Nobel Laurete Wole Soyinka and other great ambassadors of Nigeria.

The university bookshop has good books, but to reach them you have to pass through buckets positioned to catch water dripping from the ceiling.

In attending a funeral at the cemetry there, one observes that the place is bushy and largely unkept, yet illustrious scholars like the one whose funeral I attended yesterday are buried there.

I wonder how the academics there see themselves, living and working in an environment that in some cases looks like an abandoned space falling into ruin.

Everyone has their perspective on what their self development and labour are worth in relation to their standard of living.

By the time a person invests a good part of their life in self development through decades of specialised  education and have to keep daily educating themselves on the job as well as developing others through this knowledge, such people particularly need to ask the value of what they are doing with their lives and how this value translates into quality of life.

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