Commercial Activities Resume at UNIBEN

 Commercial activities have resumed at the University of Benin (UNIBEN) Ugbowo campus, after about a year of non-academic activities due to strike action and COVID-19 pandemic-induced closure.

News correspondent, who monitored activities in various locations at the csmpus on Tuesday, reports that restaurants, salons, printing and photocopy shops were opened for business.

Supreme also observed that the internal and external school shuttle services were busy conveying students within and outside the school.

Students were also spotted printing and photocopying lecture materials at the different computer shops located inside the school premises.

Some of the business operators who spoke with Newsmen in separate interviews expressed their excitement over the school resumption.

Speaking to Newsmen, Mrs Doris Omoba, a computer operator whose business center is in the school premises said she opened her shop for business due to high demand for printing and photocopying work from returning students.

“The ASUU strike coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic brought untold hardship to those of us who have shops inside the school because students and lecturers were not around to patronise us.

“But I have been enjoying high patronage from students since the reopening of the campus for academic activities,” she said.

Also, Mrs Gloria Osunde, a snack vendor at the Faculty of Agriculture, said the reopening of the school was a blessing to her family.

“I am happy to start my business again and make enough money to take care of my children.

“I usually buy and sell snacks and soft drinks to students inside the school but since the closure of academic activities, I stopped the business as I was not getting supplies,” she said.

Supreme reports that UNIBEN resumed academic activities on Feb. 1, following the suspension of the ban placed on school resumption by the Edo State Government.

Recall that tertiary institutions across the country had suspended academic activities in March 2020 following the Federal Government’s inability to meet the demands of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) demands.

However, after a series of dialogues between the union and the Federal Government, the nine-month-old strike was called off in December, 2020.

The nine months’ industrial action embarked upon by ASUU as well as the COVID-19 lockdown combined to cripple both academic and business activities at UNIBEN.