Tag: LASU VC

Lagos State University (LASU), Vice Chancellor Prof John Obafunwa is battling workers over unpaid allowances and delayed promotions, among others.  However, the Forensic Pathologist told reporters that his problems  stemmed  from the ‘sweeping changes’ he is making to make the university work well. KOFOWOROLA BELO-OSAGIE was there.

How far has the investigative panel set up to probe the PhD certificate withdrawal issue gone?

That investigation has been completed. The report is yet to be presented to the Senate.  It was meant to be presented in the last Senate meeting but unfortunately the chairman of the panel was not around to make the presentation and, definitely, by the next Senate meeting that report will be presented.

The chairman of the panel did a great job by asking questions of all concerned and they made their submissions. But I wouldn’t want to preempt their findings; at the end of the day, it will be very obvious to everyone that the university has done the right thing by withdrawing the certificates and re-awarding. We have just about two people at this point in time; as I said earlier, if there is no approved programme, we won’t be awarding a degree in that area. Those two people, one of them almost immediately returned his certificate, one is still keeping his own, but the matter will be discussed at the Senate in due course.

SSANU has given an ultimatum concerning the arrears being owed them.  What is the university doing about it?

Let me make a distinction: does LASU owe salaries? The answer is no because salaries are being paid as at when due. What they are referring to is not salaries being owed.  Before I became the VC there was a time that the government increased the salary and backdated it.  It is the arrears that they backdated at that time – 18 months arrears – that the university promised to pay. Now the (LASU) administration at that time said that it would pay the money.  That was the time they still had school of part-time and others. Then they paid one month leaving 17 months. I was at the medical school at that time; they did not pay anything again.  Then I became VC and that was how I inherited the 17 months.

The 17-month arrears amount to about N2.2 billion. Looking at the finances of the university, where will I find the money?  Meanwhile, we have all these infrastructural development that we are trying to get done with the assistance of the state government.  After a number of presentations to the government, they decided to pay 50 per cent, which is N1.1 billion and asked us to go and look for the remaining N1.1billion. Of course, I knew I still had problems, but I must give credit to the government for changing its position because initially, the government said, ‘we do not owe LASU’, which is a fact. They spread it over a period; on the inside, we also started paying in instalments.  We paid the first 20 per cent of our own 50 per cent; after some time we paid another 20 per cent making 40 per cent of our 1.1billion. By the time we stopped paying, we had paid 55 per cent. The remaining 45 per cent actually amounts to about N500 million. Why were we able to pay that money? We were able to pay it because of the school fees.  Now we are back to (charging) N25,000 and we convened meetings severally with unions and said the source of that money is no longer there; what are the suggestions you have? While some said, we will think about it; I remember one or two persons saying, ‘you are employed to look for solutions; go and think of what to do, we are not to think for you’.

Don’t forget, it is out of our subvention (we are paying).  The subvention we get from the government is not enough to even pay the salaries; so we are using IGR, which was largely based on the school fees at that time; we spent about almost N40 million every month to pay salaries but our subvention is N395 million.  What we pay out every month is about N440 million and I recalled even asking them, do you want these arrears or do you want us to owe your salaries? They said no. I know some universities where salaries are not regularly paid at this point in time. And I know some universities where only a percentage of the salary is being paid, including the person that was trying to make allegations.

We know that Olabisi Onabanjo University staff were not collecting full salary at some point. I know  the university at Akungba where salaries are being owed for about four months. They didn’t bring down the university because of it – I am talking about salaries not arrears – they didn’t destroy the place. How many of those people who are trying to destroy LASU have children in LASU?

The truth of the matter is that the so-called salary arrears is not the main issue; it is just an excuse for a different agenda. Do we still want this person who has blocked the entire avenue through which we used to embezzle money? Do we still want this person who has tried to counter things like admission racketeering?

You have been in the saddle for four years, what would you say are your achievements?

Timely release of results: We have been able to change the process of registration, such that we expect all HODs to know the number of students in his department and by extension to know the number of students to be examined; make arrangement in time with regards to marking of the scripts. Tied to that is the fact that we are saying no more ‘I am in 400-Level and still looking for my result of 100-Level, which LASU was known for in the past. Now once you finish your exams within four weeks, the result must be taken by the Senate and that was what happened. In fact, last year despite the January 23 fracas, the results of the final year students came out in three weeks.

All the final year students that sat for exams in December and will be graduating this March, we already had their results taken by Senate. We say to Senate, even non-graduating students want to have all their results, all the results must be available. The idea of final year students looking for any of their results no longer exists in LASU. The issue of missing script does not exist either.

Issuance of certificates: Another thing we have been able to do is the issue of issuance of certificate backlogs. I had to sign certificates of 1994; and even another before that. Over 30,000 certificates have been signed. These are problems not created by this administration but we are trying to deal with it.

In the external system, we have dealt with a number of results, if you do an exam within 48 hours, your result is already uploaded. Now you don’t have to be on the university campus to access your result; it has been uploaded and you can access your profile and know your result from anywhere.

Blocked loopholes for stealing varsity funds: Now you pay your school fees online. Before now they had several accounts and students were coming up with fake receipts. Now, you pay into one account.  In that account we broke it into four parts: internal undergraduate and postgraduate; external undergraduate and postgraduate. So, we know how much money is coming to LASU.  Implementation of that, of course, attracted a lot of repulsion, but people are used to it now. It is part of trying to minimise the opportunity being created for people to dig their hands into LASU money.