The second woman helmsman of the University of Benin (UNIBEN), Prof. Lilian Salami, has marked her second anniversary in office, with the assurance to remain focused and perform excellently, despite the challenges. Southsouth Bureau Chief, BISI OLANIYI reports.
Running a university in Nigeria is not a tea party. Vice Chancellor of the University of Benin (UNIBEN) for the past two years, Prof. Lilian Salami, is well aware of the challenges of office. However, she has no plans to give up – not when she has the example of the only woman – Prof. Grace Alele-Williams – to hold the office before her.
The university had to wait for 36 years before a second woman (Salami) got into the exalted office. Well aware of this, Salami, who assumed office on December 2, 2019, has declared that nothing would make her to lose focus.
Like her role model, Prof. Alele-Williams, Prof. Salami is determined to lift the institution to new heights.
She has been busy with that goal. At last month’s pre-convocation briefing for the 46th and 47th convocation, 51st Founders’ Day and the golden jubilee awards’ ceremonies, Prof. Salami said she immediately set out to make the university environment conducive for teaching and learning when she took over.
Her words: “The earliest pre-occupation of this administration was the creation of an enabling environment for the realisation of the core objectives of the university, which are teaching, learning and research.
“To achieve the goal, a total overhaul and beautification of the entire campuses of Ugbowo and Ekehuan became inevitable.
“Today, the new look of the university is the first statement to staff, students and visitors that they are here for serious and most rewarding education business, because the atmosphere is beautiful, serene, inviting, welcoming and free from distractions.”
The difference in the university’s new look was not lost on former student, Victoria Amadi, who graduated just before Salami took over.
When she returned to the school, few months after graduation, she noticed the ambience.
“In a short while after she took over things changed. The environment was better. She made the lecturers sit up,” she said.
The no-nonsense Salami declared that the challenging issue of processing of transcripts had been addressed by acquiring modern, state-of-the- art equipment and the deployment of software to all departments and faculties for transcript processing. Application would now be done online, while the process would be concluded in less than one week, except where information required was not adequately supplied by the student.
UNIBEN, with almost 60,000 students and staff of almost 8,000, can be likened to a mini-country, which sometimes pose challenges. However, the helmsman insisted the challenges were surmountable, especially graduating over 350,000 students, as the university is being supported by eminent members of the alumni association worldwide.
In the 19-page address at the briefing of November 15, Prof. Salami, a mother of five children, said: “We have successfully introduced the blended teaching methods through e-learning and physical teaching process, as a fall-out of the COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve that, a Directorate of Quality Assurance was established to standardise academic activities and ensure quality service delivery, across all academic programmes in the university.
“Intellectual vibrancy has been enhanced in the university (UNIBEN) with the organisation of inaugural lectures every fortnight, to give an opportunity to professors who have made significant researches and breakthroughs in their areas of specialisation to showcase them. This has ensured that the university community and indeed the town know what we are doing and how much the researches are contributing to the development of humanity.
“We have also introduced a method whereby certificates of graduands are available for collection, right from the day of the convocation.”
Prof. Salami, the co-chairperson of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, who is also the vice-president of the Association of African Universities, disclosed that nearly all the programmes at UNIBEN had been fully accredited by the National Universities Commission (NUC), with only about 12 awaiting accreditation, of the 118 programmes.
She noted that all the university’s 22 programmes recently accredited were scored 85 per cent and above, thanking all the members of the staff that made the feat possible.
She stressed that with the continuing embargo on employment, her administration began sourcing teaching staff among the non-teaching qualified staff of UNIBEN, with over 150 of such qualified staff so far redeployed to academics, while no fewer than 200 adjunct lecturers were appointed, to bridge the gap in teaching positions.
On December 2, Prof. Salami marked the second anniversary of her assumption of office with a briefing, where she spoke of many ongoing capital-intensive projects at the Ugbowo and Ekehuan campuses.
The projects included the construction and furnishing of professorial office building, micro-teaching laboratory, faculty of education building, centre for educational technology, twin lecture theatres at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH), student executive hostel, department of food and human nutrition building for faculty of agriculture and 500-seat capacity lecture theatre at Ekehuan Campus.
Other projects included construction of urology laboratory building, male and female hostels, furnishing and installation of office equipment for the centre of excellence in aquaculture, procurement and installation of 500 capacity auditorium seats for faculty of life sciences and two 250-seat capacity auditorium seats for faculty of agriculture and construction of a hall of fame building at Akin-Deko auditorium.
