UNILAG Didn't Just Teach Us. It Networked Us.

Banji Baniex

22 July, 2026

I log on to Twitter and see UNILAG trending, for the right reasons this time. Job opportunities, information, alumni network, exposure, proximity to business powerhouses like Yaba, Island, Shomolu, and the rest. People are hailing the school, and it's mostly not even UNILAG people doing the hailing. It's students and alumni of other schools, people who crossed paths with a UNILAG student or graduate at some point in their life, praising the work ethic, the exposure, the network, the aura, the mode of speech.

The think pieces started rolling in. Some say it's because we're in Lagos, and Lagos is Nigeria's economic powerhouse. Some say it's the mentality: UNILAG students love to collaborate, share updates, put each other on. All fair points. But true to form, UNILAG students didn't say much. We just quietly took the compliment and moved on, the way we always do.

I want to say something, because I think everyone missed the actual point.

The Small School Theory

UNILAG is a small school. Not small in population, small in geographic land mass. And I think that's the core of it.

There's a chemistry principle I keep coming back to: when there's high movement among atoms in a confined space, there's more collision, more heat, more energy generated. UNILAG works the same way. Because the campus is physically small, everything is close to everything else. The school is easier to maintain. Buildings sit near each other. People run into each other. Constantly, unavoidably, by design of geography rather than intention.

When I was a student, 2017 to 2023 (strike years included, lol), we had four male hostels and about seven female hostels, all on campus. Add the unofficial ones (CITS, Ozolua, Women Society, and I believe more have been added since) and the numbers grow further. Squatting was never officially legal, but it was how things worked. A room built for six would routinely hold twelve, once you accounted for the squatter each bonafide resident almost always brought along. Scale that across a hostel built for 2,000, and you're realistically looking at 4,000 people living, eating, and moving through the same space.

Most people wouldn't think to call that special. I think it's the single most important variable in this entire conversation.

That kind of density doesn't just produce overcrowding. It produces high-frequency, involuntary, grassroots-level networking. You end up knowing the CEO of the next big company while they were still eating bread and beans in the room next to yours. And if you didn't know them directly, you knew someone who did. That's not a coincidence. That's what happens when thousands of ambitious people are forced to share space, queue for water, and pass each other in the same three car parks every single day for four-plus years. Ideas propagate. Thoughts move. Fast.

(I'll get into specific, real examples of this, actual people, actual outcomes, in a separate piece. This one is about the mechanism.)

The Infrastructure That Made It Work

None of this would have mattered without the basics actually functioning, and credit where it's due: UNILAG got the basics right.

Every hostel had a reading room, a common room, a restaurant, a kiosk. We had laundry staff. Mariere Hall, where I stayed, had something close to a mini gym. Security was functional. Cleaning staff kept the toilets washed every single morning, genuinely, kudos to UNILAG for that. We had free wifi, and 24-hour electricity for most of my time there, even though it degraded a bit by my final year.

This mattered more than people realize, especially for people like me. I'd describe myself as more introverted than not, and I think that's an important caveat: this is my point of view, and it might be a little myopic because of that. But even the average introvert on campus ended up well-networked, just by going about their normal routine. You didn't have to force yourself into rooms you didn't want to be in. The environment did the networking for you, passively, while you were just trying to get through your day.

My Own Proof: Mariere and Faculty of Science

Every semester, without fail, I made sure I was a Mariere resident. The reason was simple: proximity to the Faculty of Science, and proximity to the library. Mariere also had a reading room downstairs. I stayed there my entire time on campus, and I'll say this categorically: if I had lived off campus, my grades would have been worse. Not slightly worse. Definitely worse.

Here's what that proximity actually bought me: I could wake up at 7:30, wash my face, and make an 8 a.m. class without stress. After class, I could go back, sleep, eat, freshen up, or head straight to the library. If I had a three-hour gap between classes, I was back in the hostel doing something productive with that time instead of losing it to a commute. I know schools where that isn't possible, where once you leave home for campus, you're stuck in the faculty area for the entire day because going back and forth isn't realistic. I've heard of schools where the roads aren't even tarred, where every movement means getting dirty. That was never our reality.

And here's the part that matters most: just by virtue of showing up (the library, the reading room, the faculty, your own academic standing) you were not anonymous. Someone was watching. Someone was trying to become your friend, trying to learn from you, trying to be like you, or quietly getting inspired by you. Mariere was how a lot of us got into tech in the first place, watching guys in the hostel actually cashing out, watching the energy around the Engineering quadrangle and Dubbin Centre. The wifi was free. The proximity was real. UNILAG has just three car parks, because the school is small enough that you're never more than 15 minutes by car from Gate, DLI, or Science.

When you win, everyone hears about it. And that win motivates the next person, who wins and motivates the person after them. It's a domino effect, and it never really stops once it starts.

UNILAG isn't just a university. It's a pot pourri of talent, compressed into a small enough space that none of it can avoid the rest.

Part of a series on UNILAG, environment, and the making of a network. Next: the real people, real stories behind "if I don't know the CEO, I know someone who does."