AN OPEN LETTER TO THE VICE CHANCELLOR, UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN,PROFESSOR ABEL IDOWU OLAYINKA. PROFFERING A LASTING SOLUTION TO WATER PROBLEM IN ZIK HALL,UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN.

Let me seize this opportunity to say that uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. As such, a leader at all time, must be ready to face all challenges at his disposal.

Vice Chancellor Sir, once again, congratulations on the success of the just concluded 69th convocation lecture, ceremonies cum foundation day celebration. I must say, you and your team did excellently well and I pray such fit is broken in the subsequent convocation come 2018. The memory to me, will forever linger on especially that I shook your hand and I was declared worthy in character and learning for the second time, now, a masters degree holder.

In order not to digress, let me go straight to the reason behind this write-up. Zik Hall, one of the most populous and the biggest undergraduate hostel in the University of Ibadan is presently facing a daunting problem of water scarcity. To the best of my knowledge, it is a reoccurring problem every dry season. Which inadvertently means that, it's either the boreholes within the hostel were drilled during the rainy season or that they are not deep enough even though it was revealed by a geology graduate of the university of Ibadan that, the hall is lying on a bed of metamorphic rock instead of igneous rock. Albeit the reasons behind this persistence yearly challenges of water scarcity, I believe that, if an appropriate geophysical survey was put in place before the drilling of the boreholes, locations with better aquifers would have been detected. The same process was done by Tedder Hall in 2009 by the Geology Department of the University of Ibadan and till date, 8years later, come rain or sun, Tedder Hall is blessed with abundance of water in its boreholes.

Sir, it is believed that Zik Hall has six different boreholes within and outside the Hall. This suffice that, the Hall may probably be on a wrong location within University of Ibadan but it should not be totally taken into consideration if the situation of its next door hostel, Independence Hall, is not as critical as its own, bothering on water availability. Therefore, it could have meant that each of the hostel blocks had been placed on the soil location with quality aquifers. With this in mind, a diagonal soil drilling under the hostel blocks need to be carried out. This is not impossible sir.

Personally, I have witnessed the sufferings in Zik Hall due to lack of water. The negative effect of water scarcity on the hostel environment and the students can never be overemphasised.

Seeing, they say is believing. On this note, I implore you sir to conduct an inspection of the Hall alongside your management team so as to know the real situation of things in the Hostel. I am not a zikite but the situation on ground is such that once a uite, always one.

Some other hostels maybe passing through this similar experience but I wouldn't know. Zik Hall is big enough to demand central administrative attention and I pray you sir, to grant it to them, even though I know that there are several administrative challenges you are facing as the vice chancellor of the institution that are really not known to us all. Likewise, it is he that wears the shoe that knows where it hurts. This is our institution, our hostel, a mark of our honour and recognition.  Let's put our differences aside and let's make everyone of us happy. Everything on earth has a purpose, even having an enemy could be a positive happenings to breakthrough. You are the father of all in the University so, don't leave the hall to the students and hall management alone.  I believe that if steps are put in place towards achieving this fit, divine intervention would come for availability of fund even in a time like this that the University is experiencing scarcity of funds.

We shall overcome!

God bless the University of Ibadan.

Akande Akin Sanyaolu
Alumnus.