Campus Politics

By second semester Chidera Obi was the most famous second-year in the University of Lagos.

He could not walk across the quadrangle without being greeted. He knew the cafeteria ladies by name, the security guards by their children, the lecturers by their weaknesses. In October, he had organised a protest against the broken borehole, and by Tuesday the borehole was fixed. In December, he had persuaded the vice-chancellor to extend the library's hours. There was a rumour that he could talk a goat out of its skin.

And Ify hated him.

She did not hate him the way you hate a bad exam. She hated him the way you hate a song you cannot stop humming.

"He's only charming," she told her roommate Bukky, a round, cheerful girl from Ibadan who took notes in four colours. "He does not actually do anything."

"He fixed the borehole."

"He made noise near the borehole. The plumber fixed the borehole."

"Ify. You are wasting your energy." Bukky blew on her tea. "You could be the one making noise."

It was an uncomfortable idea. Ify had always been quiet. She sat in the front row, answered when asked, and got the highest marks in Economics. She had come here to study and go home with a degree. She had a mother in Enugu who sold bitterleaf at the roadside and a younger brother who wanted to be a doctor. There was no room in her life for politics.

Then, in March, the Student Union announced a fee increase.

Forty thousand naira. On top of tuition. Overnight. It appeared on a notice board outside the Faculty of Social Sciences, and Ify read it twice and felt the floor tilt. She did not have forty thousand. She did not have four thousand.

Neither did half the students around her. She watched their faces. A girl began quietly to cry.

"This is wrong," Ify said.

Nobody heard her.

"This is wrong!" she said, louder. A few heads turned. "We cannot pay this! Our parents have already paid!"

A murmur. A boy in the back shouted, "Who will do something?"

"Me," said Ify.

She had not planned it. She had not planned anything. But there she was, standing on a plastic chair in the middle of the faculty courtyard, with two hundred students staring up at her, and her voice came out clear and steady.

"My name is Ifunanya Eze. I'm a scholarship student. I do not have forty thousand naira. I will not pretend that I do. If they raise the fees, they will drive out the students who need this place most. So I'm asking you, will you stand with me?"

The roar that went up shook the pigeons off the roof.

That evening she found herself in a meeting, in a borrowed lecture theatre, with forty students arguing about strategy. She spoke. People listened. A senior from Engineering said, "You should run for president."

"Run for what?"

"The SUG. The election's in May. We need somebody who is not on the take."

She laughed. "I'm a first-year."

"Second-year, in September."

"I have no money."

"You have a voice."

She went home that night in a daze. She lay on her overflow bed under a leaking window and stared at the ceiling. She was terrified. She was also, for the first time in her life, thrilled.

On Monday, the posters went up. IFY FOR PRESIDENT. A face in black-and-white, serious, a little scared. A single line: Fight for the fees.

On Tuesday, a second set of posters appeared, glossy and enormous, the entire length of the Faculty of Law. A grinning boy in a blazer. CHIDERA: THE VOICE YOU KNOW.

Ify stared at it for a very long time.

Then she took out her phone, and for the first time in her life, texted the number she had been given in her first week.

Wait. You're running?

The reply came within seconds.

Wasn't going to. Then I saw your poster. Didn't think you'd be here, Eze. Welcome to the fight. 😉

She threw her phone onto the bed and screamed into a pillow.