UniMaid: Learning amidst blasts

If you have been at the University of Maiduguri from 2009, whether as an academic or non-academic member of the university community, or among the thousands flooding in and out daily, you must develop exceptional resilience to bomb blasts; otherwise you would not be able to pursue whatever course may have taken you there.

What does one expect from a university situated in Nigeria’s north-eastern environment enduringly controlled by Nigeria’s share of terrorism and insurgency, Boko Haram, and appallingly tormented by the militarily powerful and suicidebombing insurgents?

University of Maiduguri has over 60, 000 students, 4,000 academic and non-academic staff and thousands of others doing various businesses.

With the defeat of Boko Haram practically not yet in sight, and with the understanding that life must go on at the university, in fulfillment of its statutory requirements and socioeconomic standing in the society, the hard way seems the only way for everyone having something to do with this second generation university-develop resilience to any bomb-blast trauma, and bother not about when it will end or not.

Between 2009 and December 2016, no bomb blast ever came near the fences of the university. However, bomb blasts were very frequent across Maiduguri metropolis, especially between 2011 and 2014, when about 20 bomb blasts were said to have occurred daily.

However, January 2017 came with the most ferocious turn of fortune in terms of security for the university. The terrorists and ‘their imperceptible sponsors,’ ‘for whatever reason’, seemed to have turned their attention to the institution, sniffed out of it the traditional virtue of silence and stuffed into it the vice of bomb blast.

Between January 16 and May 27, 2017-a four-month period, the university community was hit with five suicide bomb blasts.

The first, on January 16, also the most deadly, was at the junior staff quarters’ mosque where Professor Aliyu Mani, the Director of the university’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital, and four others died.

The second was on April 3, while the third, fourth and fifth happened on May 13, 25 and 27 respectively.

Perplexity now seems to inch towards drawing political inferences, implying that some invisible persons have resolved to planting insecurity at the most populous university in the north- east. The authorities seem to believe that anything of this sort is plausible.

The management holds this argument as credible, considering what they describe as the institution would be affected.

This, they reveal, is why, in spite of the fact that over 80 per cent of the university community resides within the campus, they employ a policy that whatever the spate of bombings, they would not close the institution, even for a day.

The students themselves seem to have resolved to protests, in the event that the management attempts closing the institution for a day ‘just because of bombings.’

To demonstrate the planned to implement, which they declined revealing now, the university has employed the services of local vigilante, hunters, civilian JTF, men of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corp (NSCDC). This is beside the already existing military JTF on ground, to beef up the security of the campus.

Students Union Government (SUG) President, Comrade Abu-Hanifa Babati, said: “We have come here to study; we believe that nothing can stop us from studying; we have been in this environment for a long time; bomb blasts have been taking place for a long time; so we resolved to go on with our academics and other normal activities and cooperate with the institution’s management to achieve its goal; students believe that University of Maiduguri is the best they can attend; this is why we developed resilience to bomb blasts.

“We have a platform through which we send updates to the students in order to communicate with them properly on security enhancement measures; we have opened Facebook and WhatsApp accounts through which we send messages to the students. We have also been preaching to the students to be extra vigilant and report suspicious movements anywhere on campus to either the SUG or the university management.”