Biran Gai, Political Science Student at the University of the Gambia
Nelson Mandela once professed that “When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no other choice but to become an outlaw”. I am not a prophet to know whether we may anticipate for this at the university in the near future, but it is right about time for the administration to recognize that the days of impunity and deliberate administrative inefficiencies has gone down into the historic literatures.
It is time to dissect and constructively wave a genuine notice to the University of the Gambia Students Union Body. With the recent debilitating and exasperating skirmish in the service delivery, most notably the clearance office and the unexplained UTG halfway battered bosses which are well positioned depicting a toothless bull dog at the Brikama Campus. The clearance mayhem is what propelled this patriotic essaying considered as a worthy course to appeal to the conscience of the Fatou Jeng lead administration for a swift panacea driven reaction.
As a student of political science, It would be very unwavering to side with this uncommunicative manifestation from the student union governorship who have remain indecisive and close-mouthed thus seemingly becoming an accomplish to this dehumanizing condition students continually confront just to get access to registration in the name of clearance. The systematic awkwardness should not be a matter that will sprout up to a level where students will toil for this service that they have paid for. I am a witness to a situation where students rivaled ferociously against one another, signifying how desperate the bureaucratic decay has made them become, a situation that would have easily spiral into a commotion of an undeterminable hazardous repercussion. In my own perspective emboldened by verification, nearly all the campaign promises of this new administration are still bobbling but yet to boil. The plight and wellbeing of the students is what gave birth to the mandate of the new administrative executive of the University of the Gambia students union. Notwithstanding, it is verily consequential to be noted by the new SU leadership that it is because of this trust and colorful policies that the political electorates within the university community voted them into office and therefore ought to be cognizant of this favor at all times. Since the evolution of the student union body, administrations have come and go, but our anticipation is always that of a progressive outlook were student will be accorded with all the suppose criteria’s that rationale with their interest especially when it comes to service delivery. If this flaw continues to persist then we can arrive at a conclusion and say that the current Student Union body has eroded its purpose and collapsed all its visionary promises. We are demanding a swift response from this academic and economic dishonesty orchestration by the UTG administration.
I will unashamedly project that it is disheartening to see the University of the Gambia the center vision for change in this country persistently degenerating into this kind of academic pandemonium that continues to downgrade and in the process aggravate and entice our resentment as far as these inconsistencies remain palpable. We do not vote into office a union that will be fashionable for personally self-aggrandizement, but instead whose action will be a replica of a dividend were all the encapsulated urgent reforms are successfully envisaged.
As our administrators in office, we expect a robust engagement between the executive body of the Union and the UTG administration in creating a workable and charitable university system that will graduate from redundancy in aspiring for better days of the Gambia University.
The clearance office is a viable area that should command a key priority and progressive reaction from the SU administration because I am of the view that the fiasco of this is on record and without contestation it is the mightiest academic trickery and fraud placed upon us by the university. Going through the enriching profile of our president Fatou Jeng, we know your passion to serve because your gallivanting tours across the globe representing youth can attest to this. We hope that you bring an immediate remedy to this appalling crises.