CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background To The Study  
         A safe place of living supports one’s abilities, is easy to use, makes one feel comfortable, can bring happiness, and also help one develop his/her potentialities so as to lead a successful life. The place of living that doesn’t meet these criteria can be considered as an unsafe place home. An unsafe home increases the likelihood or probability of accidents, injuries, diseases, and illness occurring.           Health and wellbeing are affected by many factors, a bulk of which is present in the homes (where people live). These factors do not operate in isolation; they often co-exist and interact with one another (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2012). The school hostel is the home of students anytime they are in school. It is where they eat, sleep, bath, play, read, cook, and perform all other basic things which are said to be done at their homes.           According to Dazio (2003), you have to know what your risks are in order to fix them. So, the first step to improve health and safety is to find your risks. This report is one of the tools that can help to carefully analyze risk factors in our school hostels. Universities are expected to house, not just academic activities, but the students seeking knowledge in various fields of endeavour: student’s accommodation should be catered for, as well as their wellbeing.           Alaka (2007) viewed student’s accommodation beyond mere proposal for development, to embrace the physical structure offering bundles of services either as a facility from which the social, psychological, and physiological activities are attained, or one developed strictly for leisure, as an affordable and safe accommodation. Jinadu (2001) identifies the psychological, physiological, facility, and security requirements as four important qualitative needs that me3asure the adequacy and habitability of the student housing. Bach (2001) also embraces other measures like healthy, safe, and sanitary shelter provision as necessary to harness student’s educational, cultural, and recreational needs. Aligned with these descriptions of student hostelling, Onyike and Uche (2010), and Egwuom (2010), have identified the minimum hostel requirements to include bed/mattresses, writing/reading chair and table, closet, wardrobe or cupboards, or chest of drawers, blinds and curtains on windows, laundry rooms, study rooms, TV lodges, outdoor recreational spaces like baseball/basketball/volleyball courts, computer laboratories, convenience stores, recycling or waste disposal room(s), shared or individual kitchens, shared or individual toilets and bathrooms, water supply, electricity supply, gas supply, high speed internet services for room use, cable TV services, and 24hours security personnel.           The vanguard newspaper of November 21st 2012, reported that fire gutted two rooms in a male hostel in the College of medicine, University of Lagos, Idi-Araba. As recorded, at about 10am, room 648 of block 6 in Alliakilu hostel was caught up in flames, and later spread to room 647. It was recorded that there was no fire extinguisher around; the only available one was in the hostel manager’s room (who was not around at the time). Also, it was stated that there was no water on the third floor, so, students had to go downstairs to get water which they used in fighting the fire. An occupant of room 648 said that that was the third time the room was going up in flames, and the student said, the cause was likely due to power fluctuation.           Another fire incident occurred in room 547, Saadu Zungur hostel; block A, of Bayero University, Kano male hostel on the 9th of December 2011, which was speculated to have been caused by an electronic gadget left unplugged. As a matter of fact, there was no fire extinguisher, so students had to rush to the room with buckets of water to put out the fire. The occupants of the room denied using anything that was prohibited, save an extension board.           It is clear, from the above, that ignorance and negligence on the part of students and school authorities have a role to play in increasing risk factors in university hostels.           A study carried out by Amali, Indinyero, Umeh, and Awodi (2012) revealed that, of all the 213 female students tested in the University of Agriculture, Makurdi, over 95% (204) of them had at least one urinary tract infection. This agrees with the findings of David (2005), who suggested that, at least 1 in every 5 adult women experience urinary tract infection, and about 50% of all women will experience it at some point I the lives. According to Amali et al (2012), the high prevalence of pathogenic organisms observed in the urine samples in this study, may have resulted from the unclean state of sanitary environments in the hostel, as well as careless and dirty habits among the students, probably due to damaged toilets and bathrooms.           The health and safety of students in our university hostels are at stake if stakeholders (students, school authorities, and government) do not recognize and counter these risk factors that pose a threat to student’s health and safety. It is therefore imperative to study the risk factors in our hostels, if we want to restore them to standard.