The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Prof. Ayobami Salami

  • Tech varsity to name non-academics as professors

    • Matriculates 190 students

    The First Technical University (Tech-U), Ibadan plans to appoint people with rich experience in professional practice as professors to join its growing faculty.

    Its Vice Chancellor Prof Ayobami Salami broke the news at the university’s second matriculation and investiture of university scholars.

    Salami explained that the idea would enrich students’ experience, adding that it would also enable them to interact with role models in their careers.

    When executed, Tech-U will be the first university to integrate non-academics into its faculty.

    Said Salami:  “As a way of enriching the experience of our students, Tech-U is putting finishing touches to a policy of attracting highly experienced industry players for appointment as Professors of Practice”.

    According to him, the professors  are professionals, either practising or retired with or without traditional academic backgrounds, who have distinguished themselves in their fields of practice.

    Salami said the policy was strategic to the university, which prides itself on its disruptive model of tertiary technical education, as it would deepen the integration of academic scholarship with practical industry experience.

    “Knowing that delivering on our mandate of a unique education model requires capable, experienced and passionate manpower, we have consistently ensured that we recruit the brightest hands in the various fields of study to teach our students. I am proud to say that our growing faculty consists of some of the best from the available pool of experts. Additionally, we have also engaged scholars in the Diaspora as visiting lecturers to strengthen the pool,” Salami added.

    He continued: “On our part, we will not leave any stone unturned in ensuring that we motivate our staff, who already are about the best paid in the public tertiary education system in Nigeria, to be able to nurture our students to become intellectual giants, who dictate trends in their fields.”

    A total of 190 students, who were admitted into the 15 programmes across the two faculties, took the oath of matriculation.

    The event also doubled as the investiture of 14 outstanding students, dubbed as Tech-U scholars, who made a first class in their first session with their cumulative grade point average (CGPA) ranging between 4.91 and 4.50 on a scale of maximum of five.

    Salami noted that of all the pioneer students honoured, 12 of them were beneficiaries of the scholarship scheme endowed by chairmen of local governments areas of Oyo State.

    Presenting their letters of award, Salami said in addition to the symbolic honour of joining procession during all university programmes, the scholars would also enjoy  N10,000 stipend monthly. The overall best student, James Olayemi Ogunro of the Mechanical Engineering Department will collect N15, 000 monthly, among other privileges.

    The matriculation, which is coming only 10 months after the first, had in attendance Oyo State Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Mr. Bimbo Kolade and other dignitaries, including chairmen of local governments in the state.

  • Tech-U to name non-academics as professors

    • Matriculates 190 students

    The First Technical University (Tech-U), Ibadan plans to appoint people with rich experience in professional practice as professors to join its growing faculty.

    Its Vice Chancellor Prof Ayobami Salami broke the news during the university’s second matriculation  and investiture of University Scholars.

    Salami explained that the idea would enrich students’ experience, adding that it would also enable them to interact with role models in their careers.

    When executed, Tech-U will be the first university to integrate non-academics into its faculty.

    Said Salami:  “As a way of enriching the experience of our students, Tech-U is putting finishing touches to a policy of attracting highly experienced industry players for appointment as Professors of Practice”.

    According to him, the professors  are professionals, either practising or retired with or without traditional academic backgrounds, who have distinguished themselves in their fields of practice.

    Salami said the policy was strategic to the university, which prides itself on its disruptive model of tertiary technical education, as it would deepen the integration of academic scholarship with practical industry experience.

    “Knowing that delivering on our mandate of a unique education model requires capable, experienced and passionate manpower, we have consistently ensured that we recruit the brightest hands in the various fields of study to teach our students. I am proud to say our growing faculty consists of some of the best from the available pool of experts. Additionally, we have also engaged scholars in the diaspora as visiting lecturers to strengthen the pool,” Salami added.

    He continued: “On our part, we will not leave any stone unturned in ensuring that we motivate our staff, who already are about the best paid in the public tertiary education system in Nigeria, to be able to nurture our students to become intellectual giants who dictate trends in their fields.”

    A total of 190 students, who were admitted into the 15 programmes across the two faculties, took the oath of matriculation.

    The event also doubled as the investiture of 14 outstanding students, dubbed as Tech-U scholars, who made a first class in their first session with their cumulative grade point average (CGPA) ranging between 4.91 and 4.50 on a scale of maximum of five.

    Salami noted that of all the pioneer students honoured, 12 of them were beneficiaries of the scholarship scheme endowed by Chairmen of local governments areas of Oyo State.

    Presenting their letters of award, Salami said in addition to the symbolic honour of joining procession during all university programmes, the scholars would also enjoy  N10,000 stipend monthly. The overall best student, James Olayemi Ogunro of the Mechanical Engineering Department will collect N15, 000 monthly, among other privileges.

    The matriculation, which is coming only 10 months after the first, had in attendance Oyo State Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Mr. Bimbo Kolade and other dignitaries, including chairmen of local governments in the state.

  • TECH-U VC wins award

    Vice Chancellor of the Technical University (TECH-U), Ibadan, Prof Ayobami Salami, has been awarded the Pan African Excellence in Leadership Prize for his contribution to the development of the African continent,

    He was awarded the prize last Tuesday by the Initiative for Positive Influence on African Youths (IPIAY), a continental youth organisation headquartered in Uganda.

    Salami, according to the IPIAY, was credited for distinguishing himself as a successful administrator, a scholar and passionate mentor to African youths.

    In his address at the conferment, the Vice Chairman of the association, Ambassador Kwasi Akin, said the recipient emerged through a rigorous procedure that involved series of multilayered screening among the diverse members of the organisation.

    While responding to the honour done on him, Professor Salami expressed shock at his emergence. “I am speechless, but encouraged”, he said.

    He however praised the organisers for their integrity and thoughtfulness, noting that they have demonstrated that all hope is not lost for the African continent.

    “Yours is a shining example that with genuine initiatives, African youths can be galvanized, mentored and redirected towards positive societal engineering”.

    It was the second award for Salami in one week.  Earlier, he was honoured with the Chancellor of Tech-U, Chief Tunde Afolabi, as distinguished citizens and role models by the Oyo State Model Education System Intervention (OYOMESI) for their contribution to the development of education in the state.

    Salami, a former Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academics) at Obafemi Awolowo University, was appointed the pioneer VC of TECH-U in May, 2017.

  • OAU and rule of the mob

    One image that lingered on the screen of my mind for a few days as I consciously monitored the crisis invented by the Non-Academic Staff of University (NASU) and the Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities (SSANU) of Obafemi Awolowo University over the emergence of the process that produced Prof. Ayobami Salami as the 11th Vice-Chancellor (VC) of the university is that of the mob in William Shakespeare’s plays. Specifically, the mob depicted in the eponymous Julius Caesar possesses everything but tact, character, discipline, and structured thinking.

    As a matter of fact, as the seminal play shows, the first casualties of the mob’s actions are those adumbrated virtues. To achieve their nihilistic goals, the mob dispenses with discretion and organised thinking, speaks in decibels higher than their numerical strength, and believes its own lies and passes them off as truths. As the mob loathes civility, so does it detests justice. It does not care about the corrosive consequences of choosing evil as good.

    The OAU crisis of the last one month was inspired and sustained by the mob. The present fragile resolution puts in place by Abuja also satisfies the hankering of the mob. Let’s not pretend about it; the actions of NASU and SSANU members in OAU against the process that threw up Prof. Salami were glaringly in tandem with that of a mob. These unions behaved violently, repudiated civility, embraced indiscipline, and acted lawlessly. In their organised violence, they demanded two things and got them.

    The NASU and SSANU mob said it wanted the Governing Council of the university dissolved. President Muhammadu Buhari, the Visitor, granted it without first investigating their claims that the body was incompetent and manipulated the process leading to the appointment of a new VC. The mob demanded an Acting VC and the Visitor obliged them. The two rudderless unions boasted they could commit punishable offences and get away with them. They did – they disrupted a meeting of the Governing Council at a point and locked up the members before the Ooni of Ife came to secure their release the following day. The offences of disrupting a lawful meeting and the one of false imprisonment were freely committed by the unions without any corresponding condign legal retribution.

    Even the defunct leadership of NASU in the university hardheartedly beat up representatives of their National Executives and seized their vehicle. No comeuppance greeted that barbarous behaviour.  The unions said they could determine when school open and close. They got it. It was on account of their violent conducts that the university was shut down in June. They have also swanked that they would only ‘hand over’ the control of the school to the Acting VC of their liking. NASU and SSANU in OAU do not believe in civilised conducts. They abhor dialogue as a means of solving social problem. It is the reason they went to court but decided to take laws into their hands, declaiming that the court would not dispense justice. Governed by the mob mentality, the two unions accepted as gospel truth the misinformation given to them by certain roguish minds that the court notice they got for the Governing Council was a restraining injunction to stop the appointment process of a new VC.  They swung into destructive actions by effectively making the school ungovernable.

    For those who wonder why non-state actors thrive in the Nigerian space, I ask them to look to the weak crisis management capacity of state actors. Look to their hollow sense of justice. Those two bellicose unions in OAU did call on the Visitor and the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu (someone The Punch newspaper in one of its editorial aptly carpeted for his ‘reckless desecration of university values’), to intervene in the contrived crisis (to quote Femi Macaulay, a columnist with The Nation newspaper) before they carried on too far with their campaign of impunity. The improper intervention of the Visitor via the Education Minister in the OAU matter is another striking illustration of the present central administration’s telling incompetence in crisis management.

    The sacking of the OAU Governing Council without an investigation to establish whether it was guilty of the imagined crimes levelled against it by the two unions in the university was hasty and improper and remains an example of how the Visitor picks and chooses when it comes to obeying the law of the land. The law is clear that the Governing Council of a federal university whose tenure has not ended can be disbanded by the Visitor where an investigation proves that it is incompetent and corrupt. In fact, the Universities Autonomy Act No.1, 2007 (Section 2A) clearly states that ‘The Council so constituted shall have a tenure of four years from the date of its inauguration provided that where a Council is found to be incompetent and corrupt it shall be dissolved by the Visitor and a new Council shall be immediately constituted for the effective functioning of the University’.

    But because the Visitor is less a man of justice than it is believed, and his Minister of Education an alien to the rule of law, he gave in completely to the demands of the mob in OAU. He trampled on the law, froze the appointment of Prof. Salami, asked for an Acting VC via the back door, and eulogised that to the unquestioning public as justice. This also aligns with the unlawful sacking of 13 VCs of federal universities and their Governing Councils last March. Not even the admittance of the wrong by the Visitor compelled a reversal of the illegality.

    Let it be noted that the new peace in OAU is brittle. The solution generated by the Visitor is insubstantial. It is a rape of justice that will still boomerang. The Visitor ought to know by now that anywhere justice is contemptuously denied as in the case in OAU, unity and peace cannot reign. The cockeyed action of the OAU Visitor, to wit doing the bidding of a party to a case without even the least understanding of the core issue, has widened the gulf of disunity in that university. He has done exactly what Chinua Achebe’s Obierika in Things Fall Apart says of the coloniser: ‘He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.’ The undisputable fact is that, to borrow the words of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the Visitor and the mob-like unions in OAU have only ‘scotched the Snake, not killed it’. And because the brazenly belligerent unions were not made to account for their follies and lawlessness, they will soon behave like the camel of the Bedouin in a story which after his master acceded to its request to allow it warm its nose in the room later brought in its whole body and deprived its master of his abode. It is a matter of time; the mob is forever besotted to the logic of anarchy and impunity. Anytime SSANU and NASU in OAU or those of the branches in other universities rake up impossible demands and insist on who they want as VCs but get turned down, they will resort to the rule of the mob and make the universities ungovernable.

    Alawode writes from Obafemi Awolowo University

    Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria

  • Update:  Protest in OAU continues

    Update:  Protest in OAU continues

    …New VC may not resume

    …FG urged to intervene in crisis

    Workers of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, under the aegis of Non-Academic Staff Union and Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities, on Thursday continued their protest.

    They organised a protest on Thursday to mark the exit of the outgoing Vice Chancellor, Prof. Bamitale Omole, who will complete his tenure today.

    On Wednesday, they protested non-payment of their allowances and alleged imposition of a  newly appointed Vice-Chancellor of the univesrity, Prof. Ayobami Salami, which they claimed was illegal because of alleged manipulation of the process that produced him.

    The members of the university staff unions had embarked on continuous protest and strike action since June 6.

    They noted that the protest and strike action were to enable the university authorities accede to their demands.

    The protesters, who carried a mock coffin of Omole round the university campus, were singing unprintable songs against the outgoing the former vice chancellor, describing his tenure as “oppressive and corrupt.”

    Putting on white dresses, the protesters said their choice of white attire was to show that they were not mourning but rejoicing the exit of Omole.

    Meanwhile the vice chancellor, Prof. Salami, may not resume office today as scheduled because of the protests.

    The OAU SSANU chairman, Comrade Ademola Oketunde, appealed to President Muhammed Buhari to intervene in the crisis bedeviling the university for peace to reign.

    He implored the federal government to investigate alleged injustice in the university during the tenure of Omole.

    Oketunde said: “We are full of joy that after being in bondage over the past five-year, Omole is going. We have to celebrate his exit and pray no to have a VC like him again. ‎We have lost confidence in both the University management and even the Governing Council.

    “We call on President Muhammed Buhari to intervene by appointing an acting VC. The FG should set up an investigative panel that is not biased and also extend the war against corruption ‎to OAU.”

    He faulted the decision of the university management to shut the institution indefinitely, saying, “Shutting down the university shows that the school management is guilty of our allegations. It shows that they have done a wrong thing.”

    Also, the OAU NASU chairman, Comrade Wole Odewunmi, insisted that the union would not dialogue on matters relating to appointment of the new VC.

    According to him, “The appointment of Salami is not accepted by my union. We want the university authorities to follow due process and not bring in someone through the back doors. The FG should come in right now and appoint an acting VC for OAU in other for peace to reign.”