Rasheedat Adeshina, a Nigerian lawyer, has recounted how she spent 14 years pressing the University of Ilorin for a certificate the institution withheld after her graduation, a battle that ran from the Federal High Court in 2004 to the Supreme Court in 2014, and which ended with an order compelling the university to release her results and pay her ₦5 million in damages.
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Adeshina, who spoke in an interview with AYOOLA OLASUPO of The PUNCH, said the dispute had nothing to do with her academic record and everything to do with her role in student unionism.
How It Began
She was admitted to study Industrial Chemistry in 1995 and, while in 200 Level, contested and won the office of Assistant Secretary-General of the Students’ Union for the 1997–1998 session.
The election coincided with the arrival of a new vice-chancellor, who she said began mobilising students indigenous to Ilorin, described as “sons of the soil”. Adeshina, herself from Ilorin, said she declined to fall in line.
“Even if you are from my town and you are doing something wrong, I cannot support you simply because you are from my town,” she said she told him. “That was against my principles.”
She recalled their first meeting after her inauguration. “He said, ‘You are the whatever. You better be careful. What is the problem? I’ve heard a lot about you.’ I told him that I had no personal problem with anybody.”
Her campaign promise, she said, was the recall of about 12 students then outside the campus over unionism, a group known as “The UNILORIN 12”. “I told the VC that those people had not cheated in examinations or participated in cultism. Their offence was student unionism.”
The Protest, The Charge Sheet And The Suspension
In 1998, a blackout after a football match triggered a student protest that turned destructive. Adeshina said she was off campus that day.
“The students beat up the SUG president and forced him to lead the protest before they started destroying things,” she said. “If I had been there, I would have told them not to destroy university property, because it did not belong to the vice-chancellor or the administration.”
The school was shut, the Students’ Union was banned, and tuition fees were raised when it reopened. The union reached out to NANS Zone D, and delegates from LAUTECH, OAU and other institutions joined the protest against the hike.
After a meeting with the administration, she said, the students were intercepted by police on their way back. “We were surprised, because we had not done anything violent. We had only returned from a meeting with the university administration.”
She left to alert other student leaders and returned to find that the others had been taken to the police headquarters. At the arraignment the following day, a plain-clothes officer approached her for her name.
“I became suspicious and gave him a different name before immediately leaving the court,” she said. “I later discovered that my name was also on the charge sheet as ‘one Rasheedat Adeshina at large.’ If I had given him my real name, they would have arrested me.”
Her colleagues were remanded at the Oke Kura Maximum Security Custodial Centre for more than 30 days. She was declared wanted across Kwara State and placed on indefinite suspension.
“I was very tiny and smallish, so sometimes when they saw me, they didn’t even know who Rasheedat was, because they were looking for someone huge,” she said. She continued to visit detained colleagues and smuggled leaflets to them. She stayed in Ilorin but avoided her family home. “I told my parents, ‘There’s no problem. I’m fine, but I can’t come home for now.’”
She challenged the indefinite suspension in court and, when the university refused to reverse it, commenced committal proceedings.
Graduation Without A Certificate
Adeshina completed her programme in 2000, but the administration held on to her results. She said the vice-chancellor had earlier told her to her face: “I’m going to ensure that you won’t graduate from this university.”
A Federal Government consultation panel set up under the Olusegun Obasanjo administration to examine cases of victimised students and lecturers took up her matter and directed the affected persons to write to the university, which she did. The university published the matter in one of its publications, but still declined to release the certificate, without ever stating a reason.
Four Courts, Ten Years
She filed at the Federal High Court in 2004 and obtained judgment in 2005. The university appealed. The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal in 2006. The matter went on to the Supreme Court, which dismissed it in 2014, ordering the release of the certificate and an award of ₦5 million in damages, which was paid.
Adeshina said the university never established a case. “None of the witnesses they called could give any reason for withholding my certificate. In fact, my Head of Department was one of the witnesses.”
Asked whether there was any outstanding course or academic obstacle, she said her HoD confirmed there was none and that she had fulfilled all requirements. “They knew they had no case, but they kept saying, in essence, ‘We know we don’t have anything, but we are going to waste your time.’”
She said the duration of the case exposed a wider problem. “It also shows one of the crises in our judiciary. Even when you have a good case and want to fight for justice, you cannot predict how long it will take.”
On the damages, she was blunt: “How much is that actually? If you lose 10 years of your life, that cannot compensate for it. That’s the truth.”
Starting Again From SSCE
Rather than wait on the litigation, Adeshina restarted her education in 2010, holding only a science background.
“I had to start from scratch to study Law. It looked like a long journey, but I told myself that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a step,” she said.
She obtained the SSCE syllabus, identified the subjects she needed, bought the textbooks and studied on her own. She sat the GCE in 2011, wrote UTME in 2012 and became a law student in 2013. By her 200 Level, the Supreme Court had ordered the release of her certificate.
She completed her law degree in 2019, attended the Nigerian Law School and was called to the Nigerian Bar in 2021, 26 years after she first entered university. She has since completed an LLM and is currently pursuing a PhD in Law.
Asked whether she ever considered abandoning the fight, she said no. “I belong to a revolutionary organisation, and I saw those challenges as necessary sacrifices,” she said. “People at the helm of affairs will not simply fold their arms and allow you to challenge their privileges. They will fight back, and in doing so, they will try to break your spirit, destroy you and make you a bad reference point.”
On what her call to the Bar meant, she pointed to the vice-chancellor who had vowed she would not graduate. “He was still alive when the Supreme Court ordered the release of my certificate and when I was called to the Nigerian Bar. They wanted to ruin my life and make me a bad reference point, but they openly failed. For that alone, I was happy.”
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