Vice Chancellor, Federal University Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE) Ekiti State, Prof Kayode Soremekun, was appointed in February 2016. In this interview, he explains to KOFOWOROLA BELO-OSAGIE why the university closed briefly last week and his efforts to lift the institution to greater heights.
You shut the university last week because of protests by your students. Why?
The students did not want to pay fees before starting exams. We voided this move. So they wanted to go on rampage. We are due to resume tomorrow (Tuesday).
Have they paid?
Some have paid, and some have not paid.
What is your admonition to the students concerning payment of fees?
Some spend their fees on frippries. Some overload their fees, thereby loading more burden on their parents. Free education is a seductive term which plays truancy with reality. And the sooner this is understood by the free-rider students the better for them and their respective futures.
You have managed FUOYE for two years; can you highlight some of your achievements?
I think my major achievement so far is inculcating the whole idea of a University. The idea I am talking about is, healthy contention, narrative and counter narrative.
In the areas of academic attainment, we have in the last two years expanded our programmes from 22 to 49 while our faculties have been increased from four to seven. For a young university, we now have a Post Graduate School. As I speak now, we are cultivating the international academic community. Recently, we hosted a workshop in partnership with the Social Science Council of New York. This was a programme that was combined with a public lecture with the theme: “Peace Building in Africa in a Post-Cold War Era.”
We have also increased our admission capacity from 3,000 to 12,000. This is an exponential growth. The implication of this is that we are helping the indigent students and children of peasants who lack the financial muscle. We equally now have pre-degree and JUPEB programmes.
We also have in the pipeline,programmes like the Faculty of Law, Pharmacy and Basic Medical Sciences.
It will interest you to know that most of our programme have full accreditation status and recently, we presented 22 programmes for accreditation and 18 were given full accreditation.