By Toyese Najeem Dahunsi
If there was any Nigerian university whose survival and productive existence were always met with increased public scepticism and pessimism, that university was Osun State University (UniOsun). The reasons for this are obvious: one, the university is a six-campus institution with the attendant expenditure duplication and logistical complexity; two, it is owned by a very poor state by all standards; three, it has no known financial base other than the paltry ever-decreasing subventions from the owner-state. But the story of the university is being gradually re-written, with evident restoration of public confidence and optimism in the institution in the last five years.
The story of UniOsun, a very young but highly promising citadel of learning, keeps giving some of us hope for a better country. The same story has drawn a simple analogy between a brand new car with a very bad driver on one hand, and an unserviceable car blessed with a very responsible, competent and visionary driver on the other. In other words, the head determines what happens to the body at all times. In the past five years, all facets of our national life have been negatively affected first by the global economic recession, and shortly after, by the globally tempestuous coronavirus pandemic. The effect of these was manifest in our tertiary educational institutions. First, salary payment became epileptic. Second, capital projects (for physical and infrastructural development) were significantly thinned down. Third, instability of academic calendars set in, with many universities losing one or two academic sessions leading to an automatic extension of students’ residency on chosen courses of study.
For UniOsun, however, the story is different. The university has kept demonstrating corporate resistance and resilience to negative external influences. The same period witnessed unprecedented consistency in salary payment. Every staff knows they must get alert every 25th of the month or on any of the “teen” days especially if there is a Christian or Islamic festival around. The university has never paid half nor rationed staff salary for any reason whatsoever. Instead, UniOsun pays slightly higher than federal universities and ensures a special pat on each staff’s back every end of the year.
Within the same period, there was a massive faculty quality upgrade with more than triple the number of professors and Ph.Ds across disciplines, a result of internal motivation, career advancement policy and strategic recruitment drive. This strongly enabled the accreditation nod of the National Universities Commission (NUC) for all existing and newly established academic programmes. This also led to the commencement of postgraduate programmes across departments, with implication for increased research output, manpower production and internally generated revenue. The physical landscape also got a boost with the historic multi-storey hostel block constructed in record time in each of the campuses, as well as a host of other structures that include laboratories and staff offices in some campuses.
Of more interest to stakeholders is the prevalent reign of peace and calendar stability on campus. UniOsun is one Nigerian university where five years is five years and nothing more, especially for highly focused students. It remains the only public university in Nigeria that did not lose any semester or session to coronavirus pandemic, as academic activities and associated ceremonies (including matriculation and convocation) were held online, unperturbed. The result of all these is increased patronage by the public. The university is already emerging as the toast of the public as the number of candidates seeking undergraduate and graduate admission into UniOsun keeps rising. This means increased societal impact and revenue. Any university that is characterised by peace and demonstrable vision must enjoy massive goodwill from the public. The multi-billion naira UniOsun Teaching Hospital Complex being single-handedly funded by the Chancellor, Apostle (Dr.) Folorunsho Alakija, did not therefore come with too much surprise.
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The summary of all these is that UniOsun keeps meeting the yearnings of all stakeholders. To staff, it pays salaries with unprecedented exactitude and promptitude; and it gives promotion as and when due. To students, it renders the services they pay for in tandem with the global principles of consumerism, and without any undue delay or quality compromise. To its founding fathers, the university has kept making societal impact through high-level manpower production, impactful research and locally competitive community service. To our generation, UniOsun gives hope of a better tomorrow with the right people in the right places.
All these could not have been possible without a purposeful and transformational management and council in place. One, the council never fails in its objective statutory superintending roles, and it is never after any pecuniary objectives. This is not a council for money making. Members were not appointed because they lost elections somewhere and government wanted them to get buffers and palliatives for such loss. This council undoubtedly earns the respect of anyone who is familiar with such terrains in our public universities. But of course the council cannot do it alone. The council only superintends and it is what management feeds into Council that will be superintended. UniOsun is lucky to have the Labo Popoola-led management at this point in its history.
The vice-chancellor himself is an internationally acclaimed scholar of repute, one man that stands out among his professorial and managerial peers. If you see how heads of tertiary educational institutions travel abroad to sign series of MoUs at different times with millions of naira each time, without bringing back anything to the institution, you will respect a vice-chancellor who keeps traveling overseas without taking a dime from the university’s treasury but funds such trips from the grants he personally sources. If you see a vice-chancellor going around with convoys and escorts being consistently serviced by ever-depleting public funds, you will applaud a vice-chancellor who has no escort, and who even sometimes travels in chartered taxis with a view to cutting cost. The multi-million naira spent on official residence for the Chief Executive Officers? Not at UniOsun. The vice-chancellor has no official residence. He lives in his private property. And the retinue of personal and special assistants to the vice-chancellor? Not at Uniosun.
What this means is leadership with integrity, leadership with vision, exemplary leadership most expected from professors. The aim of such leaders in the ivory towers is to reconstruct the collapsed wall between the town and the gown. The gown must be insulated against the rot and decay in the town. The town may be corrupt, sick or tumultuous. Such should not creep into the gown, where the best of solutions and antidote to societal rot must consistently radiate. In sum, the best leadership and governance models must be in the ivory towers. This is what the outgoing vice-chancellor of UniOsun typifies. The qualities exhibited by the vice-chancellor are clear: visionary leadership, integrity, resource mobilisation competence, emotional management, etc. He strongly believes, just as every contemporary leader should, that the little wealth generated by an organisation should be able to maintain the organisation, provided there is value for money, fiscal discipline, and all loopholes are blocked.
But, of course, no mortal is perfect. Prof Popoola may have his weaknesses. But the unquantifiable transformation he has used his academic, administrative and social strengths to foster on UniOsun should be enough for any party that feels offended by his policies or style of administration to overlook and forgive. By end of this year, the vice-chancellor will leave office and the university. Once he leaves, his salary stops. So the university belongs more to us whom he will leave behind. Every pain of surgery is simply natural, so we should blame the surgeon less. No successful renovation can be achieved without broken walls and bricks. Even for Nigeria to be back on track, we all know many heads must roll. Prof Popoola has done what God has sent him to do at UniOsun. As the race to get his successor has been kick-started, we must all support the Governing Council with prayers to be able to fill the emanating vacancy with the overall best from the lot.
- DahunsiI, Ph.D is of the Department of English and Literary Studies, Osun State University, Osogbo.
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