A DEFENCE WITHOUT OFFENCE

Final year students of Mass Comm. UNILAG during Prof. Class

It finally happened on Tuesday 4^th of October 2011 at the high court of department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos under the supreme Justice Ralph Akinfeleye-the usually dreaded project defence. Although project defence happens everywhere but the defence in mass comm. is peculiar for many reasons- it is the day of reckoning and accountability and for all those who have dodged personal and group assignments as undergraduate-it is the judgment seat of Prof. Ralph and co. Mass comm. Limited.

At about 12 noon we were all asked to line-up, that sound like a symbol of finality to me...hmm, you know that in UNILAG you have to queue for everything- when you started your registration in year one, you queue, at shuttle and cab park queue, to fetch bathing water in the morning sef na queue!(if you doubt it ask those who stayed in Makama, in the days when makama was still makama and shodeinde was still shodeinde. Thank God I’m finally free from the many queues.

Back to the judgement seat of Akinfeleye, we all entered the hall and were offered comfortable wooden seats some of which are partly broken but just who are we to complain before the chairman and head. Our attention was immediately called to the nine commandment of Akinfeleye written on the board them order to be followed in presenting the overview of the project- too bad i can’t remember them again, but why should I even remember them in the first place, I will never need them again, so... After a brief opening prayer the first person was asked to make his presentation comfortably sitting down. Waoh! He was practically the scape pig (sorry, I mean scape goat) for the rest of us- I really commend his courage despite his nervousness; he finished within the 5 minutes given to him, then the next person and the next person until it was my turn.

I delivered my presentation with such preparedness; speed and authoritative loud voice that even the chief justice Akinfeleye had to tell me “Mr. ALOFUN PLEASE CALM DOWN, ITS NOT A WAR ZONE” never! I refuse to calm down, how can he tell me that defending a six unit course is not war- it is war! But I won. I was the man of the day. I soon became a consultant for many others from the next day, the news of my great presentation spread so fast like fire in a cocoa plantation during dry season- maybe you don hear sef but you just dey pletend. Any way, now you know!

In the end our many offences were recounted, for some it was poor abstract, for others acknowledgement but the greatest offence is to leave proposal language unchecked-this offence attracts a capital punishment of REDO- meaning re-writing the whole project, but to God be the glory, there was no victim of proposal language. The only person that was close to that escaped narrowly and he later became a preacher of proposal language. I remember one of our friends had nine research questions HABA! Those ones are set to kill Prof. But he also survived. The last straw that broke the camel’s back was the Friday defence when everybody when we got breaking news that those presenting on Friday will present on Thursday and that those for Monday and Tuesday should also be on standby because everybody must present on Thursday.

All the blackberry babes swing into action pinging one another, thank God I had presented because my 3310 NOKIA palasa can never receive any ping, the defence closed at about 9pm on Thursday and the last set was done early on friday. Above all, now I can boldly say- I AM A GRADUATE, YOU NKO!