Prof. Vincent Ado Tenebe is the second Vice Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). The professor of agronomy is saddled with the responsibility of changing the perception of Nigerians about the institution. It was during his tenure that the institution organised its first convocation ceremony and most of the courses offered by it accredited by the National Universities Commission (NUC). In this interview with Tony Akowe, Tenebe speaks about the challenges facing the institution and the plans to make it compete with its counterparts across the globe.
You have been in office for about two years now as the Vice Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria. What have been the challenges of managing the institution?
When I came into office, I met a lot of challenges and I knew from the very beginning that it would not be possible to solve all the problems. But I decided to focus on the key problems to ensure that the university gains the confidence of the people. Before I came in, even getting admission into the university was a big problem. We were faced with complaints from people buying forms and not getting admission, including people trying to indulge in some scam to get people admitted. So the first thing I did was to make sure that the admission was electronic. As I speak to you, you can walk into any of our four banks and purchase NOUN form. You will be given a pin code and then you can go on the internet and fill in your data and get your admission. That solves a lot of problems. There was also the problem of students who said they had been in the system for long without writing any examination, some people spend two to three years without writing any examination. When I came in, I made sure that we put a system in place, to the extent that we are now writing examinations regularly and the results are released without delay. We introduced the e-exam, whereby you can write your exam online and get the result immediately. The system will ask you whether you want to retake the paper if you couldn’t make it. We had the challenges of perception from some people who were saying that our programmes were not accredited and not recognised. Some didn’t even believe that we are an existing university. That was because for the almost eight years that the university was in existence before I came in, there was no any accreditation by the National University Commission (NUC). I made sure I prepared the university for accreditation. Last year, 30 out of our 31 programmes were accredited. We are working towards ensuring that the one programme that was not accredited is accredited. With the accreditation of our programmes, nobody should doubt whether we are doing the real thing or not.
Many Nigerians are not conversant with the operations of the institution. What are you doing in this regard?
I agree with you on that. We have the problem of advocacy and that is why there are still millions of Nigerians who don’t know that NOUN exists. That is why I have been trying my best to partner with the media to enlighten Nigerians. Nigeria is blessed with high population and there is no how we can educate the whole of this population using conventional system. We don’t have the materials and human resources to do that, but using the Open and Distant Learning which is the mode through which we operate, Nigeria would be able to accomplish this. This is because it has been proven in countries like China, India, United Kingdom and Indonesia that are highly populated that this system is working. So if we do it well, it will work. So I can say that within these few years, I have been able to bring the university to the confidence of Nigerians. I have been able to take the university to the international world. I have been able to prove that we can perform as any other conventional university or even better. We have even beaten conventional universities in this country in some programmes, So, I can say that even though we have not arrived yet, we are now on track.
You have just enumerated some of your challenges and how you have been able to address some of them, how do you get funds to operate?
Bringing finance as one of the challenges to problems is now old fashioned in the sense that I can tell you that finance is not the problem of Nigeria. Whether we like it or not, we have a lot of money in this country. Whether we like it or not, this country is rich compared to our neighbours. The problem with us is the management. How do we allocate this finance? How do we prioritise the use of this finance? So definitely I have the problem of finance, but I did not go singing the problem of finance as the first problem because even if the federal government gives half of its budget to NOUN and we do not plan how to use it, we will still be in problem just like the whole country is in problem because we have not prioritised our finances. You know that the education sector in this country is underfunded. It is not a hidden thing. It is something that the academia has been fighting for the past 25 years. No government has adequately financed education, but then we have to utilise what we have to get what we want. We don’t just sit down and say we don’t have enough finances; the question is what do you do with the meagre one you have? But honestly, if the government is able to finance education generally, we will have fewer problems because unless we solve the educational problems of this country, then all other problems will just follow.
Most parents and even the younger people find NOUN unattractive and prefer to go to conventional universities where admission is often very difficult. Why is this so?
It is because of ignorance. You know to accept change is difficult. This is a new system that is coming and you don’t expect the younger generation and even the older ones who are not used to Open and Distant Learning to grab it. To them, unless a student gets admission, goes to live in the hostel, goes to the classroom and all those routine, they will not believe they are students. But very soon, this will be the reversed just like it is in India and China. This is a system that will allow the young ones to come to the university full time like any other conventional university. Because we are flexible, we enable them to go out there and look for some means of sustaining themselves. More than half of Nigeria’s population is not in school, not because they don’t have the qualification, but because they don’t have the financial support. We have a lot of brilliant people whose parents are poor and cannot sponsor them to the university. So even if you have the admission and you don’t have sponsorship, you will sit at home. But the Open University system gives admission to you and we allow you to keep working and we even teach you how to work better without losing the quality in education. That is why in the UK, China and India, you will see young men and women go for Open University. Even if you give them admission into the conventional university, they will reject it because nobody can sustain them there as they have to be studying and fending for themselves.
The law in conventional universities is that every student attains 75 percent class attendance before being allowed to write examination. What is the position in NOUN?
In our system, there is nothing like 75 per cent of class attendance before you sit for exams. That is the requirement in the conventional system whether you are in the polytechnic or university or college of education. The system with these institutions is that if you don’t have 75 per cent class attendant, you cannot write exams. Here is a system that even if you have zero per cent attendance, you can write your examination. In the international world, the young men and women are after freedom, they don’t want anything that can affect their decision. This is the new thing that the Open University is bringing in and that is the change. This is a system that is democratising education, giving freedom and the world is going democratic now. So we democratise and demystify education. That is why with time, Nigerian youths will prefer the Open University system to the conventional system.
Every Nigerian graduate within a specified age is expected to go for the mandatory National Youth Service Corp (NYSC). Have those you have graduated been mobilised for the NYSC?
That is another challenge that we are fighting now. The NYSC Act and the laws that governs it, prescribes that if you are 30 and below, you go for NYSC. If you are above 30, you get an exemption letter. We are a special university, our case is peculiar. We are not just dealing with youths; this is a university for everybody – both the old and the young. There are people who are reading courses in NOUN, even though they are reading first degree, they are already graduates. In this university, I have seven Vice Chancellors of other universities including myself who are students. So you are already a graduate and you enrol into Open University to study Law, after you graduate from Law, you are not going to do NYSC again because NYSC is once.
But we are also mindful of the youths who are coming fresh and that is why we have now reached an agreement with the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB). The board has made it mandatory for us to pay for every graduate that is in the age of participating in NYSC so that they can send to NYSC. We have just done that, so all our graduates who are below the age of 30 will key into the NYSC system. I will also use this forum to tell the federal government that you do not deprive any graduate of Open University who is supposed to go for NYSC because if you do that you will be discouraging the youths from coming into the system. If you discourage them from coming to the Open University, you don’t have space for them in the conventional universities. If you don’t allow them to go to the conventional universities, you are building up a population of illiterates. When you build a population of illiterates, you build up crises in your society and then you have a time bomb.
What is the carrying capacity of the Open University at the moment?
That is another interesting aspect of our university. We are limitless, that is why we are called Open. Our capacity is at infinity. Open universities today can accommodate five million, 10 million students. As much as many are interested in acquiring education, we have the room for them. We are opened as wide as the capacity of this country. As I speak to you, the Open University of India has a student population of 3.8 million students. At the moment we are already at the capacity of 132,000 students. I want to assure you that in the next two sessions, we want to hit 500,000 students. My dream for the Open University is that in the next five years, we should have at least 1.5 million students. So there is no carrying capacity. This is the only university that has the mandate to admit as many students as possible because we have the technology to accommodate the academic need of these students. Open University is a peculiar and special university, designed to do this without undermining quality.
Apart from former President Olusegun Obasanjo, how many prominent Nigerians have graduated from the institution?
In our last convocation, we convoked 7, 222 students. I don’t have the statistics of earlier graduates before now. We don’t want to focus on prominent Nigerians alone because people may think it is a political university. We are more concerned about those in the rural areas. We are more concerned about those boys and girls in the streets. I have just told you that I have seven vice chancellors from other universities including myself as students of NOUN. I am a student of post graduate diploma in education. I have the Vice Chancellor of Berita University who is a student of Law; I have the Vice Chancellor of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, who is also a student of Law. I can tell you so many prominent Nigerians who are students of our university. The Awujale of Ijebu land, somebody who is 78 years old and has been on the throne for 52 years, is a student of 100 level Law in NOUN. The more than 22 Obas under his domain have also enrolled in NOUN just because the Awujale, the paramount ruler of Ijebu land, enrolled. The Emir of Bauchi has just filled in his form for admission; the Commissioner of Finance, Nasarawa State. Some people thought that NOUN came on board to distribute degrees or sell certificates. Until you come in, you discover that it is more difficult for you to pass exams in Open University than the conventional universities.
We learnt that a group is kicking against the admission of your law graduates at the Nigerian Law School. How do you react to that?
I am a man who wants to do things step by step. Because I am a scientist, I like convincing people practically by showing you. I do appreciate and respect the school of thought which said Open University Law graduates should not be admitted into the Law School. It is because they are not aware, so it is my duty to educate them and enlighten them because the beauty of Law is the fact that when you are arguing cases, you make reference to what has happened before. That is what gives a lawyer an advantage over the others in court. As I speak to you, the Open University of UK produces the best lawyers in the UK. This year we have 400 level Law students. Every year, the faculties of law of all universities in Nigeria have what they call “Moot Court Competition” where they argue cases and so on. The university that emerges winner at the end of the competition goes abroad to represent the country. This year they were about to do it and I asked my students to key in, but they said Open University is not recognised. I virtually lobbied for my students to participate. As I speak to you NOUN is the winner of that competition this year. Our students defeated all other Law students of conventional universities to emerge winner. So our Law students are going to the United States of America in April to compete among 80 other countries of the world. So when the time comes for the Council on Legal Education to admit our students to the Law School, the situation will speak for itself. We are using the same curriculum as given by NUC to all universities. I tell you that our students are far better than students of other universities because Law is studied based on experience.
