Nigeria's university system is rotting from the inside out. The decay is everywhere, but student hostels represent the most visible shame.
Last week, national television broadcast footage from Eni Njoku hostel at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. What viewers saw was horrifying.
Toilets overflowed constantly. Bathrooms reeked and stood filthy.
Laundry areas had turned pitch-black and crawled with maggots.
Students cooked in hostel courtyards using dried palm leaves as fuel. Half-naked young men and women worked over open flames.
It painted a picture of complete institutional collapse.
The hostel bears the name of Eni Njoku, a pioneering academic who once led the University of Lagos. His legacy deserves better than this.
Students confirmed the rot extends beyond Eni Njoku to other residential facilities on campus. They asked obvious questions: where was their hostel money going?
One culprit emerged quickly. Cleaners had stopped work five months earlier because the university hadn't paid them.
No wages meant no cleaning crews.
But poor sanitation wasn't the only problem. Hostels housed far too many residents for available space.
Combined with filth, the health risks were genuinely alarming.
Vice Chancellor Simon Ortuanya should remember UNN's own motto: "Restore the Dignity of Man." His institution must live up to those words immediately.
Yet Nsukka isn't unique. Every major university across Nigeria faces similar nightmares.
A student at a prominent South-West institution described her reality bluntly.
"Our facilities don't work," she told reporters. "Bathrooms are disgusting, mattresses have bedbugs everywhere, there's no water, and electricity barely exists."
At University College Hospital in Ibadan, darkness dominated 2025. A ₦400 million unpaid electricity bill left the campus without power for 100 straight days.
Clinical students couldn't train properly. Medical services ground to a halt.
Staff and patients alike suffered the consequences.
Basic water access should never be negotiable for university students. Ordinary Nigerians dig boreholes themselves when governments fail them.
Yet higher institutions can't manage what citizens do independently. It's a damning indictment of institutional leadership and national priorities.
Water remains fundamental to human survival and dignity. Without it, sanitation becomes impossible and disease spreads rapidly.
Nigeria operates 310 universities nationwide. That includes 74 federal institutions, 68 state-run ones, and 168 private academies.
All suffer from crumbling libraries and broken laboratories. Classrooms overflow while research budgets shrivel to nothing.
Electricity vanishes and water dries up routinely. Students study in darkness and live in filth.
Relevant authorities must act decisively and without delay. Universities require urgent infrastructure rehabilitation across every facility and system.
Students deserve learning environments that preserve their health and dignity. Anything less is a betrayal of education itself.
