The founder, Pan African Society of Cardiology (PASCAR) and former Vice chancellor of the University of Ibadan, Prof. Ayodele Falase, is 70. In this interview with GBENGA ADERANTI he speaks about life at 70, university politics, his abduction by armed robbers and war front experience.
At 70 you are not showing any sign of fatigue. What is the secret?
It is the grace of God. Well, I know that is the standard answer. But as a doctor, you know what goes on within the body. You would find that the body is so complex that it takes the grace of God for one to live up to any age. Can you use a car for 70 years without servicing it? That is how the power of God is.
As a scientist, one is surprised to hear you talk about God…
Science without God is nothing. Okay, don’t let us use the word God, let us use a being. We come to the earth, claimed the earth but we didn’t manufacture it. Somebody else did and made sure we had food to eat and air to breath. How many of us have been able to manufacture such a thing? What is science? How do you manufacture air? How do you manufacture water? It is just H2O. We cannot fuse it together. If we could fuse it together, we would have made so much water. How do you cause a plant to grow? We didn’t make it and if you don’t acknowledge that somebody must have made it, then there is a problem.
But scientists now clone?
You clone but you clone what is already there. Many times I said did God make a prototype? I don’t know where he put cells, because if you look at your skin under the microscope, it contains many cells all working independently but together. It is when one does not work in tandem with the others that it starts dividing, and that is what we call cancer. Who put all these things together? It is God. What I’m saying is that we know little about the world, the body, how things work. Anybody who says he is a scientist but does not acknowledge that there is a superior intellect is just being a fool.
Can you relive your experience at the University of Ibadan?
I attended the University of Ibadan in 1963 when things were working well. You would apply, they would screen and accept you, then the Federal Government would give you a scholarship. If you were not lucky to obtain a scholarship, there was the Western Region scholarship. If you did not obtain that, there was Community Scholarship. There were companies like the UAC who were giving scholarships. You get to campus; you pay your fees, which covered your meals, accommodation and tuition.
Everything was done by post. We didn’t have e-mails and things like that, but you could see efficiency within the country at that time. There was no crime, there was electricity. Throughout my time in the university, there was power outage only once and it didn’t last more than a few seconds. That was Nigeria for you at that time. But, of course, things have changed now, and we’ve not got out of it. When people talk of world class universities, Nigeria had them before. In my class at that time, We had Americans, many Ghanaians and many other nationalities in addition to Nigerians.
Was it the lure of quality or convention?
Quality and the fact that education was cheaper in Nigeria. Some of them could not cope with the rigour of academic work here, so they had to leave.
Was it more rigorous here?
Oh yes, it was very rigorous. When you had in an anatomy class a professor who believed you could no go out and play games, you have to work hard on your anatomy.
But they also trained abroad?
They made it harder for us here.
At what point did you start dreaming of becoming a doctor?
My father was a priest. He was posted to Ikenne and at that time he was also the school manager. So I attended school early. There was a dispensary in Ikenne not far from our house, but they just treated malaria and minor things. One day, I had an infection. You know at that time, most of us moved around barefooted. So, my mother then took me to the Sagamu General Hospital. It has now become a teaching hospital.
When we got there, we sat down. Suddenly, there was a commotion. Everybody lined up saying, ‘the doctor has arrived’. There was this young man who came and they started calling us one by one. And when he saw me, he looked at my foot and gave me an injection. I believe it must have been penicillin. I looked at the man and I said this man must be very important; I must be like him too. I think that was the motivating factor.
You became a professor at 35, but things appear to be more difficult now. Why is this so?
You see, when you finish and you did your postgraduate, the university system was a magnet attracting you back .It was natural, we must come into the university system to teach, do research and all those things. And the milieu at that time made it possible for academics to survive. In those days, if you had a first class or second class, your natural abode was the university. But things have changed. Even people who had third class now find themselves as lecturers. So they may not have the same orientation and you needed to understand what I’m trying to say.
The academic community was a closed community at that time. We were not participating in politics or anything, but we were devoted to our area. People would judge you from your research. People would judge you from what you did, your research output and you are promoted according to this. So, everybody concentrated on that. Many times we came home by 9 pm. or 10 pm. We were either holding academic meetings or we were doing our research, computing the results and all those things. That was what we concentrated on. So we were able to produce a lot.
Now we have three groups of people within the university community. There are those who still have the inclination, but there are those who are on the other side of the coin, who are doing the work because there is no other job to do. They’ve not imbibed the spirit of academia.
That is part of our problem in Nigeria. That is part of the problem of academia that is part of the problems within the university system in Nigeria besides the fact that we do not run our university system properly. We need a paradigm shift to run our university properly and to recreate academia.
For example, I see no reason why Nigeria should not be at the forefront in the research into solar engineering. Here we are, we have a problem, we have no power, yet I’ve not seen any university in Nigeria that has taken up a research. I heard yesterday that some Germans are going to assist us. We should be the ones to assist them. That is what the university ought to have been doing, even if they are going to receive a grant from the Federal Government. We don’t have to use generator all the time and things like that. Those are the functions of the universities.
I’ve not seen a university in Nigeria that is a leader in malaria or sickle cell disease. We were before. Many of the publications on sickle cell disease came from Africa. That is what academia is meant for and there must be support from government not to recreate the way but to look at our critical problem in the country and see how we can solve them. It is a pity we’re not doing them.
What people think about now is money. Were you not conscious of that at the time you took up an appointment with the university?
The condition of service was so good at that time that, in fact, universities were earning more than civil servants.
What about industries or manufacturing companies?
They were at par with industries. But during the military, they set up a committee which came, I think it was the Udoji Commission, and levelled everybody under the perm sec, and that created what we have today. That was the origin of people calling themselves engineer, architect, pharmacist to show that we too are professionals, because they lumped everybody under the perm sec. That is part of the problem we are still dealing with.
Let me take you back to your early days in academia. In joining the teaching staff in 1974, you got your doctorate in 1976 and you became a full professor at 79. These are incredible feats…
It was all about hard work. By the time I became a professor, I had 50 papers. At that time, not many people had 50 papers. Those who were going for professor had 30, 40 papers. But as I told you, we were working hard. In fact, when I was being promoted professor, I was telling them no. I didn’t want to put in my paper.
What happened at that time was that the head of the department, Prof. Shofowora, wrote to all members of the department to submit their papers for promotion. Everybody submitted but I didn’t submit. He called me and said, ‘Dr. Falase, I’ve not seen your papers’ and I said ‘yes sir.’ He said, ‘why didn’t you submit?’ I said, ‘I didn’t want any promotion.’ He then said, ‘what is wrong with you?’ I then said, ‘I’m a young person; you know my senior are in the department, I don’t want a situation where if something happens and I get promoted over and above my seniors and there will be problems for me within the department.’ He said, ‘no we don’t do it that way, we do it according to your research output,’ and I said, ‘yes sir’ and left.
When it was about a week to the deadline he called me again and said, ‘I’ve not seen your papers; you’re being insubordinate.’ I ran to a friend of mine, Prof. Kolawole, and I told him. He was my senior friend, very close to me. I said, ‘Professor Kolawole, please help me tell him to leave me alone.’ Professor Kolawole now said go and bring your papers. He looked at the papers and said this is good. I said Oga help me tell him, I don’t want to be promoted, but he said go and submit it.
I submitted and after preliminary meeting, they said there were problems and I said fine. I asked, ‘is it over?’ he said it is not over. I said let it be over.’ Like I said, I didn’t want to be promoted over and above my seniors. I was a young person, I could wait. But Professor Kolawole insisted, Professor Shofowora too insisted. That was how I became a professor. Because I was enjoying what I was doing, I didn’t want to create problems for myself because of promotion.
Did it eventually create problems for you?
It did. But again, this is the grace of God, because what I was fearing most was for you to be promoted over people who were much more senior to you and you want to be the head of department as a professor. But fortunately, I was shunted to sub-deanship, that is faculty administration by Professor Akande Kolawole, and from there to dean and then to provost. So, I never became a head of department at that time. By the time I emerged dean and provost, my seniors had become heads of departments, so it was better.
You became the provost of the College of Medicine at what age?
That was 42, I was very young.
And you didn’t encounter problems?
You see, the politics of deanship or provost in the university is such that if a younger person is contesting against an older person, the younger person is likely to win because all academic staff vote. The younger members of the university will tend to relate more with younger person who is contesting than with an older person, and that has always being. I won at the contest because I was the youngest.
And the older ones did not get angry?
There was nothing they could do about it. But to be fair to them, I brought in one of them I contested with and we ran the College together, and he didn’t object as deputy provost. I thought that was magnanimous of him. He was far older than me.
The position of vice chancellor nowadays is political…
Highly political. It has always been political because it is an interface between the university and government and the populace. In those days, it was not as political as it is now. But in those days, those who were running the universities, who were council members, majority of them were external members. They were really people of good standing within the community.
The university was run professionally and some of the landmark achievement of the university which we’re still using, like the creation of U.I Ventures Limited which now owns the hotel, the petrol station and many things were created by this group of persons.
But what do you have nowadays? You have politicians. How can you appoint an 85-year-old man or 90-year-old man as the chairman of the council? He cannot make too much progress. Not only that the number of people who are now in council who are external members are less than internal members. What I’m saying in essence is that staff are running their own affairs and the crop of people you put there are politicians and their interest is to recoup what they spent on election.
There was a university where chairman came and said, ‘this contract is mine, that contract is mine. All the rest you can go and award because we’ve been sent here, we fought for this election and we won and we’ve been sent here to recoup our losses.’
But weren’t the appointments made according to the law?
The military changes the law and that is that. It doesn’t go like the present system where the law goes through a system. So, this is where we got it wrong. After the last strike, I told a friend of mine that another strike would come, you had better start preparing. He said ‘no it won’t!’ You see, you have a situation at the moment council is made up of politicians. External council members are less than internal members, but above all, they cannot determine remunerations.
The irony is that all staff of the university are appointed on behalf of the council, but that council cannot determine remuneration. So, if they want an increase in salary it is no use talking to council. The best thing is to paralyse the university and talk to those who should do something about it. And that is what is happening in Nigeria. And it is about the only country that runs its universities like that. Elsewhere, universities are independent entities where the government will sponsor students to come and learn in excellent universities. We must get this concept right. If we don’t, what is going to happen is there will be more and more incursion into universities.
But subvention and grants are given from the centre.
Subvention is just a one-line subvention, meaning it may not be enough. Again this is another problem of the university which nobody is looking into. Universities now have to generate their electricity, their water and other infrastructure. Now when we try to solicit help from overseas, we met a number of vice chancellors and it was obvious when we were discussing. The vice chancellors in Europe and America, there problem is not water, electricity, telephone; these are assumed. Their problem was finding more funds for research and all those things whereas in Nigeria, our problem is how to find money to supply water to hostels, how to generate electricity to universities and that consumes a lot of money.
The University of Ibadan for example has a contraption where they take water from Eleyele and purify it and then pump it into the university. But as the university grows, that thing cannot cover the entire university and there is water problem. And every year, they have to ask people to come and supply chemicals. Do you think that is the problem of the VC in the University of London?
If you look at the pattern of strike, the majority of strikes are government-induced but majority of internal strikes are as a result of poor condition of hostels, lack of infrastructure and many of them have told government that if you have a structure like this and you can support the university by providing water and you give a grant for universities to pay the salaries of staff, the amount that a student will pay to enter that university will be minimal because you’ve taken a large chunk of what the university spends its money on.
Do you think we can get sufficient scholarship?
Oh yes, why not if we are serious?
Do you think Nigeria can still make top 200 universities in the world?
Oh yes. They did it before. University of Ibadan and Ife were excellent universities before. Didn’t you see the number of white people coming to lecture there? You only need to advertise and they would come. But how many of them would come now? Even with the last strike the system has completely gone haywire. By the time they start in January, nobody will know when the session will end. We are waiting for the next strike when the money is not enough again.
Don’t you think ASUU is getting it wrong?
It is not the fault of ASUU. That is the only way of getting money. You tell me of another way of getting money. You go to government and you say we need money; government will say ‘I have no money, go away.’ But if you want the government to listen to you, paralyse the university and it would say ‘give them what they want.’
I want you to tell me the politics that was involved in making you the VC of the University of Ibadan.
I contested for the VC three times. The first time, I was not in. At that time, it required a council member to nominate you. A friend of mine, Prof. Falusi, was the one that submitted my name. I was not selected. I said fine, no problems. Four or five years later, another contest came. By that time, I was back in my department, but this time I applied, because I didn’t want anybody to say I was the one who made you VC. Funny enough, one of my patients was the Minister of State for Education, but I did not tell her that I applied for the VC’s position. It was to go through the Ministry of Education. I fought for it and I was shortlisted. Among the three, I was not number one but I did not tell her for two reasons. I felt I would be taking advantage of patient/doctor relationship and secondly, I believe that if God wanted me to be there, He would make it possible.
I was not chosen. My conclusion was that was the end of it. I was not interested anymore.
I would just concentrate on academics, research and so forth. But the third time was interesting in the sense that just as you’re sitting down here, a group of academics from the university came and appealed to me to contest, and I said I didn’t want anymore. They said the university was in problem and they needed somebody who could put things right. I said I would think about it. Then the rain started. They said they had to go and they ran through the rain. The rain thoroughly beat them and I ran after them to accompany them to their car.
Then something just came to me: two important people came to beg you and you’re saying you will think about it. They want you, you didn’t ask for it. Why don’t you put in your papers? The next day, I just put in my paper and it came out that I was number two, and I said thank God, that was God’s decision. But later on, I got a phone call from Saudi Arabia around 2 am. Myself and my wife were startled because we didn’t expect any phone call at that hour of the day. It was a friend of mine, Prof. Bamigboye, he said, ‘you’ve been appointed the VC of Ibadan. He said call so and so, and they will give you the detail.
Of course, nobody could sleep that night. I then phoned the man. He said I should not tell anybody and that we should prepare when it would be announced. That was what we did. It was interesting and I had the fun of my life. People would come to me and say we’re still working on that thing when I already knew. I would say thank you. There were also speculations in the papers, I’m sure they were being sponsored by those who were interested. ‘Falase is an unknown quantity, he is this, he is that.’ I just kept quiet. But they warned me that it would be announced on so and so date on FRCN and the government newspapers. But I don’t think I can do it now because it is more political.
You must have taken some painful decisions as Vice Chancellor…
Oh yes, because you must situate it with what we had. There were demonstrations every day. Even the day after I resumed, there was a demonstration in the school. They closed the department. There were students demonstration virtually every week.
If the students were not on strike, the staff would be on strike. There was no water. The hostels were horrible. Everything was just upside down and somebody asked me, ‘why did you take this job?’ Again we prayed to the Lord and we thank Almighty God that He really helped us. We really went through a lot. There were lots of things we had to do to bring sanity back to the university and re-orientate it.
The long and short of it was to curb things like cultism and do all sorts and try and improve the living conditions of students and try to improve the teaching conditions in faculties. How you do that in the milieu where you’re not getting money. You’re not getting anything. The money you’re being given is less than what you needed to pay salaries. That was the challenge. What we did was to re-orientate the university to postgraduate university and we were given a grant by McArthur Foundation which we used to improve critical areas of the university.
One of the things we did was to improve the teaching capacity of the school. When we looked at the staff over the years they were all BA Ibadan, MSc Ibadan, PhD Ibadan and many of the staff never went to anywhere. We had to commit a large part of that grant into capacity building.
McArthur was very frightened because they were worried that they would be fined by immigration. But all the people we gave grants came back and they were better for it and they now saw how university functions. We used part of the money for distance learning and used part of it to support research and to do things like that.
The money we were given initially was one million dollars, which if you look at it was not near what we were spending. But it made a difference when it was applied correctly. At the same time, we curbed cultism. If you do a study, you will discover that there were two major things that were fuelling cultism. One of them was that many people who are not supposed to be in the university are there. Secondly, the JAMB assessment was bad, We took a decision to eject those who cheated their way in, and that brought stability to the university of Ibadan.
You were in the army during the civil war. Tell me your experience.
We were conscripted into the army by General Obasanjo. We were really qualified doctors. The country was at war and they said it was compulsory for us to go and help at the war front. I didn’t enjoy it. They tried to entice us but I said no. You see a regimented life incompatible with academics. You present your data and I say this is all rubbish. But if a Major tells a General that all what you’re doing is rubbish, the Major will end up in the guardroom.
At a point, you were abducted. What was the experience like?
I was abducted by armed robbers. It was tough. I thought that was the end. You know I was just going to work. I had this new Peugeot 406 and they said they wanted the car, and before I knew it, they had surrounded the car. A lot of things went through my mind. Eventually, the young man who was leading them was sitting with their own driver. He warned me, ‘don’t try to run because we’re passing through Sango Police Station. I would shoot you.
At Eleyele, they dropped me off. Later on, they dropped the driver off again. The driver was lucky because the police confronted them. You see, sometimes we condemn the police. They have problems. In my own case, they knew those robbers were coming and they radioed ahead that they were coming. The policeman who took the message had no way of communicating this to those who were on the road, so he just grabbed a bicycle and tried to run down. By the time he reached those who were on the road, they saw the car coming and they started a shootout.
Some of those policemen did their work. Some of the boys ran into the bush. They tried to tear-gas them. The police kept quiet. But after the boys felt everything was quiet, they thought the police had gone and they came out of the bush. Some of them were caught. It was a scary moment.
