The National Association of Students of English and Literary Studies (NASELS), University of Ibadan (UI) executive council codenamed Team Rejuvenation has announced their first planned programme tagged Hue Heaven for the second semester. It certainly posits as entertainment embracing the display of colour outright. If it comes to fruition, it will tally the number of events in NASELS-UI to three in this session of which none is about scholarship.

The NASELS had Retro Day and a movie show tagged A Night of Horror in the first semester. The former ideally refreshed the old memories of costuming, while the latter gave an epoch conflict for survival in glitz and glamour. The two events served as catalysts for the rejuvenation of the lost communalism of the NASELSites. Both achieved their purposes; the students of the Department of English went out en masse to have fun and show their solidarity for the unity building amid the Kwashiorkor vantage disposition of members to the NASELS growth in time past.

Nonetheless, the announcement of the third entertaining event, Hue Heaven, a picnic, has called for a reverberating reflection. It is an alarm that makes a deafening cry of the strangulation of scholarships in the NASELS if care is not taken. The veracity of making the NASELS the hub of entertainment, devoid of any show of erudition, is highly conspicuous, even visible to the blind and audible to the deaf. The body accompanies its superior in UI, the Association of Faculty of Arts Students (AFAS), and the University of Ibadan Students’ Union (UISU) in the microscopic format of organising events — focusing on entertainment alone. Everything is now about fun, knowledge-based events are non-essential.

The second semester’s travelogue remains three weeks of learning. This means that it will be difficult for the NASELS to organize another event, except the annual entertaining ones, such as dinner, picnic etc., considering the few weeks left for attending classes. Any keen observer among the students will acknowledge that there is a change in the NASELS political landscape, shaping into jamborees alone. The sole inclination presently encompasses ‘social’ programmes.

The NASELS always organized the NASELS Prize for Literature. Its appearance went AWOL about four years ago. However, the crops of leaders who came to the helm after have succinctly failed to bring it back to life. The members of the NASELS are always vociferous about its return, but their outcries always meet dead ends.

The current president, Akomolafe Sinmiloluwa, during the Press Night, promised to bring the NASELS Prize for Literature back to life, but nothing has been shown so far. She pledged to also resuscitate Know Your Literature, a quizzical literary contest birthed and buried two sessions ago. Prof. Remi Raji was the chief sponsor of it then, while Prof. Gbemisola Adeoti of the Obafemi Awolowo University was also part of the donors. However, Know Your Literature died the same year it came to life. Last session, the executive council codenamed Team Cohesion did not organise any scholarship contests for the students; the previous executives only organised Know Your Literature. Team Rejuvenation looks apathetic concerning planning for any events that can augment the knowledge of the students and showcase their intellectual acuity.

The NASELS Public Relations Officer, Opeyemi Elijah Adesina, posted the NASELS Southwest essay competition once. He did not bother to send any reminders to the NASELS Family Page. Instead of ensuring good participation from the NASELS-UI, the current executives see it as inconsequential; the competition is not worth winning. Notwithstanding, he often posts about social events. In addition, Elijah on the NASELS TV does not make any scholastic posts. At least, the viewers should be able to learn new things within the confines of literature and language, since its viewers are the internal and external public of the Department of English, University of Ibadan.

Year in and year out, the leaders in the NASELS venerate and celebrate organising entertaining events. Years are counting. The intellectual events have been put on hold, while the NASELS wallows in the subterfuge cesspit of fun. Of late, in the last three years per se, scholarship is not needed. It is denigrated. One day, a generation of students will be NASELSites who do not know that events that promote brilliant and literary sagacity were once parts of the NASELS annual events.