Oluwagbenga Kolawole
Stealing is not exactly a new issue in Zik Hall. It is rather sad to say that most Zikites are used to it. It is almost like a rite of passage. They go through life in the hall, braving the risks of having their valuables stolen from them. A day where nothing is taken as a huge win. This, in ordinary contexts, should be a source of great concern for safety and security, but then, there is nothing ordinary about the way theft occurs in Nnamdi Azikiwe Hall.
Bola*, a 400-level student of the Faculty of Agriculture, was in his room when his friend came to charge using his power bank. He decided to step out briefly to the cafeteria to get something to eat. According to him, he and his friend stepped out together, so he locked the door and took the key with him. By the time he came back (roughly 15 minutes later, according to his estimations), his corner had been practically emptied. His power bank, his friend's phone and his own phone had been stolen.
“The door has been broken by, like, the catcher; they broke the catcher in. So, at that moment, it was just the power bank and the phone that were in my head that, okay, they took the phone and the power bank. So, I was just not knowing other stuff well,” he said.
Over the course of the next several days, Bola would go on to find several of his other belongings had been taken. A lot of personal things, like his cream, his earbud, his wristwatch and even his clipper.
I was #50,000 in debt — Zikite
Bola's roommate, Dare*, was also robbed. In his own case, he didn't notice he had been robbed until his customers started asking for their properties. It was then that he finally realised that the electronics he was told to repair had been stolen.
In the days that followed, Dare* described with bitterness the kind of issues he had to deal with, from clients who lost faith in him to clients who understood and let it go to the ones who demanded that he pay them back. He found himself absolutely gutted by the incident. This is the same with every other individual whose stuff was stolen. Most of them find themselves having to scramble funds together to replace their stolen properties in the era of inflated costs.
As stated earlier, this is not a new emerging issue. It is just one that takes a new dimension every year, and over the past fifteen months, Zik Press was able to note some interesting twists in this trend.
Over the course of fifteen months…
Unlike some halls of residence, Zik Hall has four entrances, but the one that gets a lot of monitoring is the main gate; the others do not. Coupled with the fact that Zik Hall is like a junction for people going to other halls, this is probably why the hall is especially targeted because the unscrupulous individuals can easily come in at any time and blend in among other unsuspecting residents.
Over the course of the past months, there have been several cases of thieves being caught and suspicious individuals being apprehended. For instance, on Friday, 19th of July, 2024, a thief was apprehended and was severely beaten before the security unit of the school intervened. Two sessions ago, on two separate occasions, two individuals were caught vandalising the hall property; one even succeeded in cutting some electrical wires, an incident that made some parts of A block go for days without light. That same session, another individual was caught, this time around Zik Hall gym. Witnesses say he was caught stealing some of the gym equipment.
Regular gym goers in Nnamdi Azikiwe Hall are the only ones who can effectively narrate the story of how the state of equipment in the gym went downhill, as the gym was attacked not once, not twice, but several times in the last fifteen months. Zik Press gathered that on occasion, the doors of the gym were broken and some gym plates were carted away by the thieves. While some of these thieves were apprehended, the state of the gym is not the same again.
All this is due to the fact that in a hall of residence that is as dynamic and buzzing as Nnamdi Azikiwe Hall, clandestine movements rarely get noticed.
Psychology of a thief
On an individual level, the reasons for stealing are not always very clear. Some quarters have attributed it to a deep-rooted psychological issue (kleptomania); this could drive them to steal and steal again due to a kind of kick they get from it. On the flip side, the country is in dire straits. The radical economic policies of the current Bola Tinubu administration have pushed many citizens into desperate times. With an inflation rate of approximately 33.69% (as of April 2025) and being largely unable to feed themselves, some people have resorted to acts like stealing. As a result, they target individuals who can satisfy their needs, in this case, Zikites.
They come to the hall and then blend in among unsuspecting residents, and then they move what they want to move. Most times they enter the rooms of individuals who fail to lock their doors, and they “raid”. The ones who don't know Ibadan are shown the rough side of Layipo. There have been cases in which people lost their phones and other valuables. In one case, an individual in the hall lost his laptop.
The most common items stolen are clothes. However, on occasion, the thieves also pack any other thing that might have any value: buckets, stoves, pots and pans. So when these items are stolen, it doesn't seem like they are being selected; it seems like they are being packed in bulk.
Nobody is spared
On Wednesday, 30th of October, 2024, the hall warden of Nnamdi Azikiwe Hall, Dr Okunlade Adelekan, posted a message on the Zik Hall Official WhatsApp platform. In the message, he revealed that a washing hand basin in A block had been stolen while reiterating that Zikites should be vigilant in their activities. A few weeks before that, one of the Zik Hall retailers, a vendor known as Lagbaja, was also robbed. According to him, some packs of soft drinks he keeps outside his shop were stolen overnight.
In an interesting turn of events, some days later, various Zikites came out to report the thefts of their things. According to information gathered by Zikpress at the time, pots and stoves constituted the bulk of what was stolen. The victims, after cooking their meals, left their pots to soak outside their room. They also left their stoves outside after cooking due to the smoke. But as fate would have it, by leaving their pots and stoves outside that fateful night, these individuals kissed them goodbye, as they would not see them again.
One of the victims, while speaking to a Zik Press correspondent, revealed, “I figured out my pot was stolen after I heard that a few of my floormates' stoves were missing. I quickly went to check where I dropped it; it wasn't there. And mind you, the boys whose stoves went missing and my floor rep had gone to meet the defence minister like minutes ago. When they came back, the only thing I could pick as the summary of their journey was that the defence minister’s stove was also stolen.”
Now, this is where the issue becomes even more interesting; the time period between Lagbaja’s goods being stolen and the washing hand basins being stolen is about a month. Also, the time period between the washing hand basins being stolen and the pots and stoves being stolen was a matter of days. The timing of these events suggested a growing intensity, like an intense multiplication of audacity and growth in the number of individuals with nefarious purposes in the hall.
At the time, authorities like the Hall warden and the Hall's defence minister put out various messages to acknowledge this issue and encourage Zikites to be vigilant. In the hall warden's message, he ascribed the cause of the situation to the NASU strike, which began on Monday, 28th of October, 2024. For one thing, the NASU strike had the porters vacate their posts. This virtually threw open the hall's gates to these individuals. The absence of porters probably contributed to emboldening these individuals to carry out their nefarious purposes because stealing pots, stoves, and a whole washing hand basin requires a lot of nerve and some team effort.
The nerve of the perpetrators is definitely pronounced because even in the times before and after the NASU strike, some hall properties were vandalised. Some of the incidents mentioned earlier happened before that time.
As a concerned Zikite said on the Zik Hall Official Group, Until they steal person?
The defence team
Unfortunately, this recurrent issue has almost completely transformed the arm of Zik Hall responsible for providing security, the defence team, into a PR group of sorts. In a recent survey sent out by Zik Press on the matter, one of the respondents did not hold back with his reply. In his words, “The defence boys are not defending shit.”
While it is easy to point fingers at authorities responsible for certain duties when things don't work out, the issue of constant theft in Zik Hall is one that really asks the question of whether the defence team members can really handle this issue. Some of the Zikites that Zik Press reached out to for comments were rather undecided about the level of blame that should be apportioned to the defence team on this matter. One of them commented that the things that have been happening have been very unexpected. "No one else could see it coming, so why should ordinary students be expected to take on the whole responsibility?" he said.
In an interview with the defence minister, Emiola Waliu, he admitted that the issue of theft in Zik Hall is not one that the defence team can handle on its own. He stated that this is why his team has always been sending out broadcast messages and pasting banners and stickers on each floor, to get Zikites to take responsibility for their own security.
“If people are not taking responsibility, there is nothing we can do. I don't even think the defence team is up to 1% of the entire team or population in Zik Hall. And it is also to curb this same issue that we brought in the campus security service representative during the special orientation to sensitise them on this. And then it is not being reciprocated by the proper actions. That means the security responsibility is not being balanced. I won't say we are doing our maximum. We can still do more. But if we can still do the little we are doing, there should be a commensurate effort from the occupants of the hall,” he said.
To their credit, the defence team has taken the matter of sensitisation quite seriously. As the defence minister further revealed, they even carried out a raid in which about 15 gadgets were taken from rooms where the occupants failed to properly lock their doors. But then, even he admitted they could do better. For instance, some Zikites who spoke to Zik Press commented that the defence team could definitely increase the number of times they go on patrols.
The day of the owner
The saying Everyday for the thief, and one day for the owner, is actually a Yoruba saying.
“Ojo gbogbo nitole, ojo kan nitoniun.”
In the context of the Baluba Kingdom, the day of the owner almost always does not come. It is not like there is a specific day when their properties will be unstolen and magically returned. So most people move on with resignation that they won't find those properties, but on the whole, most have come to terms with it. They try to learn from what they did wrong and try to be more vigilant. And this is where it becomes more concerning.
From January 2024 to April 2025, the total number of suspected thieves and suspicious-looking individuals that have been apprehended in Zik Hall is more than five. In each instance, the swiftness of the university security unit in intercepting and taking the suspect away before real damage is done is super commendable. However, there have been occasions in which some of these suspects were "touched" before the security team showed up. Even when the security team showed up on time, there are times when some Zikites have clamoured for the suspect to be given "a little beating" before being taken away.
For the most part, Zikites have remained civil. But if this situation persists, their response could worsen. The session is still quite young, so not much has happened yet, but the school authority must try as much as possible to beef up the security in the school, especially in Zik Hall. Security education alone can no longer solve this issue. More concrete measures need to be put in place for the safety of the residents of Nnamdi Azikiwe Hall.
*Editor's Note: Some names have been changed to protect the identities of the respondents.
