By Musa Cole
That Fourah Bay College is now the softest target for thieves and armed robbers is the understatement of the decade. I am first going to bore you with the litany of thieving that plagues the college every day. Over the years successive lax administrations, an inept and almost useless campus security outfit have allowed this once beautiful campus to deteriorate into what can pass for an abandoned citadel of learning.
Day in day out, the campus’ myriad bush paths are traversed by everybody most of whom have nothing to do with this once great institution. If it is not bedraggled boys and men with filthy sacks purportedly looking for disused sandals, bottles, scrap metal, empty beer and soda cans, it is emaciated girls, boys and sometimes women looking for wood or jerry. Or jerry can totting indigents traversing the campus with barrel loads of water fetched from either the Botanical Gardens or the few functional stand pipes that dot particularly the Lower Faculty section of the campus. These are actually thieves masquerading as indigent scrap collectors and water carriers.
In the guise of looking for scrap, they can steal anything from any unsuspecting person-evidence for this abound. The booming scrap metal business has put paid to Fourah Bay College. With the invasion of this free-for-all campus by scrap metal hungry youths went vintage British metal cesspit covers and plumbing. Even underground electricity cables are not spared. Today cable theft I learnt accounts for a large proportion of power outages that now plague this campus in spite of the relative improvement in power supply in the capital.
Administration after administration have demonstrated a scandalous inability to protect their own. A few years ago when I was a student in the 2000’s, a student Union Government renovated the lawn tennis court complete with wire mesh and a mini pavilion. A few months later the thieves looted it comprehensively- mesh, net, iron bars and all. Today what we used to call ‘Blood Stadium’ in true Fourabite style is now bare and abandoned. To add insult to injury, the same young hoodlums who come ‘up’ every day to loot the campus have now turned it into a football pitch-that is if they are not ravaging the mango trees all over the campus during summer. As usual, college security looks the other way. The same goes true for the Havelock Grounds-the college’s dusty and abysmal sports facility (for want of a better word).It is also a free for all.
Everyday filthily clad youths in what passes for football kits storm Havelock to play football without even, in the least seeking the permission of the authorities who always look the other way. In any case, these ‘footballers’ are really thieves, for on their way back home through Kortright I was told, they simply cart away unsuspecting college staff property. I have learnt that national league football clubs also sometimes take the liberty to hold training sessions there. Who can blame them!
I was shocked to learn from former college mates who reside up Kortright that inspite of the fact that the college pays millions to the SLP for armed security on campus, there have been armed robbery attacks on at least the residences of three professors in the last quarter of this year leading to losses amounting to millions of Leones.
The same they say is true for many other households on campus. An atmosphere of fear now hangs over Kortright as the presence of armed security on the campus has done nothing to deter the marauders.
As if the foregoing is not misery enough for college staff, thousands of dollars’ worth of college equipment (including computers) continue to be carted away by robbers who incessantly attack especially the Pure and Applied and Engineering Faculties buildings night after night. I was laughably told that quite recently a teenage boy hacked off and made away with the bust of Solomon Caulker installed in the front of the hall in ‘broad daylight’.
A space age computer lab I was told which was set up by some foreign organization has been so repeatedly raided and vandalised by robbers that it has now been rendered non-functional. A distressed lecturer told me that what is more painful is that in spite of all these spate of robberies; the authorities continue to demonstrate a shocking lack of concern. Kortright they say is not spared even during the day. Snatching of mobile phones, computers and other valuables I learn are everyday occurrences by thieves who waylay unsuspecting pedestrians that ply the route to and from campus.
The reasons for this parlous state of affairs they say are easy to find. Some usually impeccable sources say that recruitment of security is done largely on sentiment.
Most security personnel hired by the college I learnt are relatives of college staff most of whom have no security background. Some say the thieves are in cahoots with security in their nocturnal looting of the college. The porosity of the colleges borders they say is another problem. Because the college’s perimeters are largely unmanned, thieves of course take the liberty to try their luck. The college also is almost always impenetrably dark even when there is electricity.
The reason for this is that not only does the campus lack street lights, buildings, especially in the science and engineering faculty areas adjacent to the fast disappearing Botanical Gardens are either not lit at all or poorly illuminated at night-little wonder that robbery is largely limited to this part of the campus that houses the college’s expensive lab and computer equipment.
Administration after administration they say have put in place no effective measure to curb this menace. The hostels which have remained uninhabited for over five years now has not helped the situation.
The presence of thousands of resident students definitely helped deter thieves. Some say the earlier the hostels are refurbished and the students allowed back on campus the better for the safety of the college and its inhabitants. Some also expect the lecturers and the staff associations to be more pro active and hold the administration to account for their safety and that of their property.
Fourah Bay College many say is headed for extinction if some robust measures are not put in place to rescue this fading citadel.
© Politico 30/10/14
