By Abdulganiy Farouq
At this point, I think the students living behind the stadium in Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto (UDUS) deserve their own student leader.
If you have never stayed there before, you may not understand the struggle. People only talk about the area whenever rumours about girls and how bad the “back of stadium guys” are start flying around campus.
But beyond that, many students there are quietly surviving one of the most stressful lifestyles inside the university community. Sometimes, living behind the stadium feels like living in another country entirely.
You can wake up with money in your account and still remain hungry because finding something to eat can become a mission.
During the just-concluded semester holiday, you would often see most of them moving in groups, like the Israelites following Moses, trekking to the hostel mini mart to buy pap and akara from the popular seller there. Even after eating, many of them would still remain around the mini mart until the Sokoto sun became too hot before returning to their various hostels. Sometimes, I wonder if they do not have homes.
But honestly, it is not entirely their fault.
If you urgently need provisions, your options are limited. It is either you buy from the two popular provision shops, Bangis and Baba Magawatta, or you start trekking under the Sokoto sun to the hostel mini mart. And anybody who has trekked from the back of the stadium to the mini mart during afternoon heat deserves national award.
When I spoke with Abdulquadri Opeyemi, he laughed before explaining how frustrating the experience can be. “Sometimes you will need to enter the hostel mini mart before you can fill your stomach,” he said.
This might sound funny until you experience it yourself.
The area accommodates many students, but some basic provisions are scarce. Once certain items finish in those two popular shops, students are left with only two choices: trek long distances or endure. Even worse, some students believe the lack of competition has affected how customers are treated.
A second-year Linguistics student shared one experience that still annoys him.
“That day my sachet water finished, and because of my health condition, I could not drink from well water,” he explained. “I transferred money before leaving my hostel because the network there is usually poor.”
But after reaching the shop, the seller reportedly told him he had not seen the alert and asked him to come back later.
“When I returned, the sachet water had finished,” he said. “He asked me to buy bottled water instead. I requested cash so I could buy from another shop, but he refused. I had to borrow money from a friend before I could buy water.”
Then there are the bike men too.
Somehow, transport prices from different parts of the campus to behind the stadium behave like fuel prices in Nigeria. Nobody really understands how they increase. A distance you entered yesterday for N300 can suddenly become N500 depending on the rider’s mood, the weather, your facial expression, or whether it is morning or night. Most students complain that because the area is slightly distant, some riders take advantage of residents, especially at night or during rush periods.
And when you finally manage to find the provisions you need, another battle begins: price.
Some of the residents say some goods are sold far above what is obtainable inside the school mini mart. A sachet of things like biscuits that costs around N350 elsewhere may suddenly become N450 behind the stadium.
To many students that have already been struggling with feeding, school expenses, and transport costs, the difference matters a lot to them.
But perhaps the funniest part of everything is this that despite all the hardship, students behind the stadium continue surviving like nothing is wrong.
They still troop outside to the hostel mini mart at night to gist. You will find many of them at football viewing centres whenever matches are going on.
Maybe once you start living there, you suddenly adapt to the culture too.