It is highly paradoxical that while coming from relatively distant places like Ibadan, Ile-Ife, Ilesha and Ikirun may not pose many challenges to people going to the campus of Fountain University, Osogbo, getting or boarding vehicles from the nearby Osogbo-Gbongan junction and Osogbo-Ilesha roundabout of the highway leading to the institution can sometimes be pretty difficult for students and staff staying or living off campus. The situation can be much more severe or unbearable when it is raining or on a very sunny day as motorcycles and tricycles may even be nowhere to be found while students and staff who don’t yet have private vehicles will be stranded. They will be looking at their wristwatches repeatedly as the time keeps running like in a race and they will continue gazing in different directions, even the opposite one, to see if there will be divinely sent vehicles, motorcycles or tricycles to pick them up. They may eventually get terribly soaked by heavy rain or drenched by their own profuse sweat after waiting in vain for vehicles, motorcycles or tricycles to take them to the campus which can somehow be frustrating or discouraging.
So, some students who don’t live on campus like the conversion-programme students sometimes come late to classes or lectures simply because of the transportation travails they face. They get to the nearest highway junctions leading to the campus of Fountain University, Osogbo, sometimes in relatively good time, but eventually find it difficult to get vehicles, motorcycles or tricycles to promptly take them to the campus. In a similar vein, they suffer the same transportation travail when going back home after rounding off daily academic activities thereby completing the two-way cycle of lateness to class and lateness when returning home. The same is the plight of staff members who don’t yet have private vehicles and whose day and night prayers definitely centre on divine grace or favour to get miraculous vehicles. Just as students can be punished by lecturers when they come late to classes simply by being disallowed from entering classes, staff members, especially those who are administrative workers, may be queried and eventually sanctioned if found guilty of allegation of incessant lateness to work. This, however, may have negative cumulative effects on their career progression ceteris paribus.
Many of those usually affected almost daily by transportation travails are sometimes forced to inevitably go a-begging and possibly against their wishes or moral ideologies especially because of the age-long proverbial cum philosophical aphorism that those who go a-begging go a-sorrowing. However, they won’t rely on this position at this point in time because they must get to their classes or offices, even if late, by way of necessity or compulsion, hence, they have to embrace the Niccolo Machiavelli’s the end justifies the means philosophy or ideology of getting your target goal or reaching your desired destination via possible means. So, some will be forced to beg shylock motorcycle riders to take the amount they have as opposed to the outrageous amount they often charge those who are obviously running out of time and about to be late to their classes or offices. They may have to sacrifice their sitting comfort to accommodate the number of passengers the motorcycle owner will want to convey to the campus, irrespective of their gender, simply because their passionate pleas for lower fares have been granted by the commercial motorcyclist.
Sometimes, some of those affected by the transportation travails will have to be waived passing vehicle owners on the highway leading to the campus for free rides. These may be people they know going in the same direction like friends or colleagues working in the same place. These may even be compassionate people they don’t know but who just feel like assisting others. Soliciting the free rides of strangers can be pretty dangerous, especially at a time like this and considering the state/spate of insecurity nationwide. This is especially in respect of the alarming rate of kidnapping and ritual killing orchestrated or masterminded by myriads of unbelievers who are seekers of overnight wealth/riches often regarded as nouveau riche using the term borrowed from the French language, whose own blessing is not from above but from the pit of hell. It is unfortunate that people with such ill-gotten wealth are now celebrated by many people in our contemporary society instead of being condemned and ostracized to serve as a deterrent to others. Furthermore, sexual advances also follow when some people decide to assist others by giving them free rides, especially those who believe nothing goes for nothing. This can be embarrassing to believers who always look, act and live like true believers and who detest immoral behaviours that are not in tandem with the fundamental tenets of their faith.
It is surprising why appropriate steps have not been taken by the appropriate authorities at the appropriate quarters to terminate the transportation travails of the said students and staff of Fountain University, Osogbo to make their lingering travails or challenges become things of the past. This will only require doing the needful and ensuring that the right people take the right step at the right time in the right way or the right direction to get the right result. One even wonders if it is not possible for any of the geographical communities or communities of interest in the vicinity of the institution who are aware of the plights of the affected students and staff and sympathetic to their unfortunate situation to help find long-lasting solutions to their daily transportation travails. Is it not possible for the students and staff unions to come together and reach out to the management, the government or the transportation workers’ union so that there can be some designated commercial vehicles located at designated bus stops especially the nearby highway junctions leading to Fountain University, Osogbo? Is it not possible for these designated commercial vehicles at the designated bus stops to be conveying or transporting students and staff to and fro the only campus of the institution at reasonable or subsidized rates? Is the problem of one member no longer seen and treated as the problem of all other members as often pro(claimed) by unionists who are supposed to be the eyes, ears and mouths or voices of the people they lead and represent?
Obviously, it is high time to eradicate the transportation travails of staff and students of Fountain University, Osogbo who stay off campus for various tenable reasons and who from the viewpoint of theistic positivism or optimism can be regarded as future vehicle owners. It is high time Fountain University, Osogbo had or got campus commercial vehicles courtesy of educationally oriented philanthropists and other benevolent organisations among others, just as it is in some other institutions of higher learning facing similar challenges and where some people don’t stay or live on campus. This becomes pertinent especially at a time like this when it is crystal clear that things are very critical at various levels of human existence, especially for those on the lowest pedestal or at the very base of the socio-economic stratum. This is the only way to ensure the maximum comfort or happiness of the maximum or highest number of people in the immediate environment and the society at large as postulated by John Mill’s Principle of Maximum Utility otherwise regarded as the Utilitarian Maxim of Maximum Happiness or Pleasure. The students and staffers constantly affected by the lingering transportation travails really need relative or maximum comfort too for them to put in their best in their respective activities as students and staffers of the prestigious and frontline Fountain University, Osogbo.
Samson Oluga
Department of Mass Communication
College of Management and Social Sciences (COMAS)
Fountain University, Osogbo (FUO)
Email: samoluga@yahoo.com
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