Challenges of Students' Off-campus Housing in Nigerian Universities: The University of Ilorin Experience

Abstract

Housing, as one of the basic necessities of life, has been widely acknowledged to be grossly inadequate both in quality and quantity. This is unarguably largely due to the population explosion experienced the world over. The phenomenon has particularly drawn much attention of research focus on students' housing across Nigerian tertiary institutions, owning to the upsurge of admission seekers into these higher institutions of learning. Due to the inability of management of institutions to provide enough oncampus accommodation for students, a larger proportion of them are made to seek solace in off-campus housing for their accommodation need. This study is, therefore, an attempt on the challenges of off-campus housing in Nigerian Universities with reference to the University of Ilorin. Data for the study were collected at 3 different areas of student residency not far from the University gate. The purposive sampling method was used to select students' hostel and random sampling method was thereafter used to administer questionnaires on them. In all, 300 questionnaires were administered in ratio 3:2:1 in (closest: closer: close respectively) in term of proximity to the school gate. Data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics, while descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage, pie chart and chi square were used to present result. One Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to establish the variation among the condition of housing in the three selected areas. Results showed that students were faced with a number of challenges such as epileptic power supply, high cost of rent, delay in getting to and fro school and insecurity among others. ANOVA results indicate significant variation in conditions of houses in the residential areas with p values of 0.000, 0.000, 0.034, 0.023, 0.000 and 0.000 for condition of roof, availability of kitchen, laundry and bathroom and condition of floor and wall respectively. It, conversely, shows that room size does not vary significantly at p = 0.079 at 0.005 confidence level. The study concludes by recommending Public Private Partnership strategy by the University in providing more on-campus housing, procurement of more mass transit means of transport and partnership with landlords in students' residential areas on the provision of security among other solutions to engender environmental sustainability