Student activist rusticated by UNILAG graduates after seven years

After seven years, Mr. Olorunfemi Adeyeye, a student activist who was expelled from the University of Lagos in 2016 for organizing and leading a large demonstration against inadequate facilities on campus, has received his diploma.
Adeyeye was suspended along with a few other student activists for taking part in the demonstrations on April 6 and 8, 2016, which resulted in the closure of the school and the subsequent indefinite suspension of the University of Lagos Students Union. Adeyeye was reinstated in 2022 and is now a graduate of the Department of Building.

In a Facebook post titled “The Senate of the University of Lagos; a conglomeration of academic ignorami,” Adeyeye was also charged with criticizing the institution’s administration for their failure to handle problems as “democrats.”
Adeyeye, who was pictured standing at attention in his sign-out photos that he posted on his Facebook page on Monday, was wearing a white shirt that read, “It needed attention, and I gave it full. continue the significant actions. Grateful.”

On March 31, 2016, the National Association of Nigerian Students dispatched a group of students into the university campus under the name “Save UNILAG Coalition,” with the purpose of interfering with the Dean of Student Affairs’ job. While Adeyeye was on suspension, this accusation was made.
Adeyeye and other student leaders were found to have broken a rule in the university’s 2015-2016 student information handbook, the university claimed in a statement, rather than being punished for their participation in campus protests.

Adeyeye refuted the claim in a 2016 interview, saying that he and other student leaders had been invited by the university to a panel known as the “Special Senate Disciplinary Committee on Recent Students’ Protest,” where it was stated that they had been rusticated for taking part in a protest.
He added that what he wrote in the Facebook article that the university had mentioned indicated that the university Senate’s decision to rusticate him had been made in an undemocratic manner.


“It was rather disheartening that the university said. It is an untrue statement. I was invited to a panel together with other student leaders. The Special Senate Discipline Committee on Recent Students’ Protest was the name of the panel.The resolution of the Senate was not the result of a democratic process, especially with the student leaders who took part in the protest, as was made clear in every sentence of the essay I uploaded on my Facebook page. There was no policy prohibiting the “unauthorised use of university name, logo, etc. in a manner that would bring the university to disrepute,” according to Mr. Adeyeye, from the time I was admitted to the university until the time I was rusticated.