Forcing LASU bread into the throats of the community of the LASUITES by banning other bread from being sold on your campus is draconian, nonsensical, illegal and unconstitutional as it violates citizens' right of choice more so in a public institution like a university which universally thrives on best practices of the harmonious contest, competition of ideas, choices, perspectives and principles to move the institution forward.
Madam VC, it's when LASU bread freely and openly competes with other bread within & outside of LASU campus that you will know its position on the market scale from consumers’ feedback and sales records.
Forcing LASU bread into the throats of the community of the LASUITES by banning other bread from being sold on your campus is draconian, nonsensical, illegal and unconstitutional as it violates citizens' right of choice more so in a public institution like a university which universally thrives on best practices of the harmonious contest, competition of ideas, choices, perspectives and principles to move the institution forward.
It's good that the responsive Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, FCCPC, has slammed the Lagos State University for its strange "Omo Onile Bread Bigotry" in a 21st-century citadel of knowledge. According to the active executive vice-chairman of FCCPC, Babatunde Irukera (as reported by The Gazette and other media organizations), monopolising bread sales on the university’s premises violates the competition law under the FCCPA. He added that the university management was not exempted from the law.
“I am afraid this presents a potential violation of competition law. Under the FCCPA, it’s an offence to limit competition in this manner. LASU is not exempted because governments are also subject when they engage in commerce. I assume this statement doesn’t convey what it says,” Mr Irukera tweeted.
But my worry is the quality of thinking in our university system nowadays which LASU has again symptomatically revealed because I continue to imagine how some professors can sit down somewhere and come out with such academic faux pas and celebrate it. Gosh!
This is a university that is alleged to have erudite professors of law and renowned professors of economics. Then what could have happened, or the VC, Prof. Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello acted alone out of excitement or ecstasy of LASU Bread animation? It's not a sin that the university wants to sell its bread by exploring the vast population of its students, and academic and non-academic staff, but it can be done effectively without sending all "stranger bread" out of the campus.
Did the university address its mind to the possibility of many parents of their students selling bread to survive and sponsor their children to school? Is LASU producing many types of bread like wheat bread, white bread, coconut bread, yeast bread, honey bread, and cocoa bread, so what gave them the impression that nobody is eating these types of bread in the school? By the way, how many thousands of loaves of bread can LASU produce per day before unleashing the bread monopoly on its community? That's interesting.
I have been an addicted bread eater since my childhood, the trait which one of my daughters, Treasure Moremi, has joyfully inherited as the current bread-eating champion in the family. So, I can authoritatively say that decreed monopoly can't sustain any bread in the market. What sustains bread in the ever-competitive market are the following: quality, taste, fluffiness, neatness, considerate and competitive prices, regularity of supply and promptness to consumers’ feedback. Market monopoly is gradually earned not enforced when bread bakers take cognizance of those factors and more.
In Abeokuta in those years, it was Kabiotire bread that almost monopolized the bread market before Ife Olu Rising Bread and later Tekobo bread gave it good competition and shared the market with it. Now in many parts of Lagos, Top Taste bread is running riot in the market "capturing" towns and villages in quick succession to the extent that our traditional Agege bread can't breathe very well again. Agege bread's long-time soul mate, the popular "Ewa Aganyin" has moved on with its own life, like a promiscuous woman, with other fine bread in the market.
Let all bread flourish in public spaces including LASU. When OAU came out with its own Ife Brown beans and Great Ife Bread in the past, it never banned other bread or beans from its campus. FUNAB didn't ban other sellers of palm wine and bread when it started its own production. LASU should take a good lesson from them and others and rescind forthwith its decision to impose a bread sales monopoly on its campus.
My fear is that when a university starts a strange "doctrine of necessity" like this LASU bread market monopoly, others will copy them to any ridiculous extent. Let's hope we won't wake up one day to hear that only books authored by LASU lecturers can be sold in LASU bookshops. Or only LASUITES can sleep with LASUITES as students or workers as part of the university’s preservation of the campus emotional market monopoly. The market is the market after all. Don't be surprised that many people including some "serekode" and "bolekaja" (Street & fight to finish) academics will defend such awkward decisions because there's no bad thing people don't defend again in our unique country.
Adeola Soetan