By Ola ‘Kiya, Reporting
IN this 21st century, where individuals, nations and institutions have gone or are going cashless, the UI Water Enterprise, owned by the very premier citadel of learning, University of Ibadan (UI), UI Ventures, is still living in the stone age by operating archaic mode of business transactions.
Wikipedia says “The Stone Age began about 2.6 million years ago, when researchers found the earliest evidence of humans using stone tools, and lasted until about 3,300 B.C. when the Bronze Age began.
“It is typically broken into three distinct periods namely: the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age), Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), and Neolithic (New Stone Age).
“Each period is based on the degree of sophistication used by humans to fashion and use stone tools.”
The premier university’s Water Enterprise can be grouped under one of these three periods with its old fashion way of sales of sachets and bottled water by insisting on payment in cash, thereby defying the Federal Government’s cashless policy!
The UI Water Enterprise is located directly behind the UI International Conference Centre – a few minutes walk from the Second Gate. So, it enjoys patronage from people in and outside the campus.
On more than three occasions, our reporter was at the factory to buy sachets and bottled water, but met the bucolic method of payment by cash at the cashier’s cubicle. It was bewildering!
“We don’t use the PoS system here. We only collect cash and the Remita we have has no network,” a lady cashier retorted when our reporter wanted to make some purchases on Tuesday April 16,2024.
A similar scenario also played out two weeks ago when our reporter was at the factory to make some purchases; one of the cashiers, after much whining, agreed to use the Remita machine by connecting her phone’s hotspot to it. Of course, about N180 was deducted for the service!
Back to today, Tuesday April 16, 2024, the same ugly incident played out. Our reporter had actually forgotten his last encounter at the factory. The lady cashier on duty would not agree to accept the use of Remita or any other mode, except by cash. She said there was no network!
Receipt obtained from UI Water Ventures on Tuesday
Isn’t it appalling that while petty traders like groundnut and pepper sellers at roadsides and Bodija market are armed with PoS for their business transactions, UI Water Enterprise with several workers on its payroll and available customers in an academic environment, the cradle and custodian of modern civilisation has no provision for PoS and other forms of entrenching the cashless policy?
So, UI Water Enterprise’s customers must, willy nilly, come over with cash before they can purchase sachets and bottled water? What’s the reason behind this obsolete thinking? Could corruption be the reason? Do the receipts they issue to customers actually belong to the enterprise or an individual? Who’s benefitting from the archaic policy of only cash transaction?
A woman, perhaps, in her 70s, who was also at the venture to make purchases, expressed sadness at the development in a first generation university of UI calibre.
“I’m surprised they’ve remained adamant in their method of payment. It’s unfortunate. The world appears to have left the UI behind.
“Other channels of payment should have been made available to customers. Only the management can explain why it is so,” she quipped.
This is not to conclude that the entire university campus is anti-cashless policy. Checks round the campus revealed that restaurant operators in some halls of residence such as Kuti Hall, Awo Hall, Mellanby Hall and Bello Hall, among others, as well as computer operators at business centres at the Students Union Building (SUB), UI main gate, and other parts of the campus, all deploy cashless channels to transact their business. They take transfers via their digital banking accounts and engage their personal PoS machines.
Is it not, therefore, shameful for UI Water Enterprise, which has professors as directors, to be so backward thinking by refusing to apply the Federal Government’s cashless policy in its daily transactions?
We, therefore, call on the UI authorities to wade into this shameful anomaly of insisting on collecting cash for purchases at the UI Water Enterprise. Other cashless channels of payments should be made available to customers in line with the times. UI Water Enterprise should stop embarrassing the acclaimed first and best university in Nigeria.
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