Tag: Redeemers University

After almost 10 years living in borrowed robes by staying in the comfortable Redeemed Christian Church of God’s camp on Km 46, Lagos/Ibadan Expressway, Redeemer’s University finally moved to its own home and its own campus at Ede in Osun State. To many of us who are used to electricity supply 24/7 and regular water supply, as well as peace and security and the opportunity to fellowship with the body of Christ at the camp, and particularly with God’s appointed shepherd, Pastor Adeboye, moving out of the camp has been a wrenching experience even though all of us expected that one day or the other we would have to make this move. When the time came it was like a thief in the night because no one really expected it. Many of our students were praying earnestly that this would not happen in their own time.

Apparently, their prayers have not been answered. The vision of the man of God who is the proprietor of the university was to locate the university in Ede for which several years ago land has been made available to him for the fulfilment of this mission. When the university started in 2005, considerations about staffing, about students’ intake, about proximity to Lagos and all other earthly reasons made the authorities of the university to begin to toy with the idea of building the university along the expressway from Lagos to Ibadan.

Temporary facilities were rapidly built in the RCCG camp at a cost of some millions of naira and it was gradually becoming unthinkable that this vast investment will be abandoned by moving the university out of the vicinity of the camp. The proprietor of the university then began to look for land near the expressway. Several hectares were purchased and paid for sometimes not only once but twice yet people continued to encroach on this land, forcing the authorities to spend billions of naira to open a brand new road through Simawa from the RCCG camp to Ikorodu.

Again, land was paid for but because of the greed and the avarice of the land owners and the mistaken assumption that the church has a deep pocket, they kept demanding for more money and even at a time asking inhabitants of one or two villages to be put on pension without having performed any work for the church. In exasperation, the proprietor apparently seeking the face of God felt that our problems in the university were due to disobedience to the vision God gave the proprietor.

It was in this circumstance that the decision to move to Ede was taken and anybody who has had contact with Pastor Adeboye would know that when he takes a decision inspired by God, nothing can change it. Within a year of taking that decision to go back to Ede, billions of naira was deployed to transform virgin forest into a university campus.

The existing master plan was quite grandiose and it would have taken years and perhaps a trillion naira to bring it into a reality. Interestingly, there were local banks and foreign financial institutions, some of them of doubtful integrity that were ready to provide funds of course at interest to the university authorities to build a 21st century campus. Redeemer’s University is quite different from other universities even from other sectarian church-inspired universities.

The proprietor does not believe in usury and would not allow the university to go borrowing money from the market. This means then that an action plan within the master plan had to be drawn up. This action plan is what is being followed right now. With less than a year, hostels that can accommodate 4,000 students have been built in modules of 24 students per house and two students staying in one room en suite that is with toilet and bath for two students.

A friend of mine who saw this praised the proprietor for building for students what he called executive accommodation and this is the absolute truth. I remember when I was at the University of Ibadan; on my floor we probably had about 20 students to two toilets and three points of shower. Of course this was the golden years of the University of Ibadan in the 1960s.

When my nephews went to the University of Ibadan, water was no longer available in the hostels for bath and flushing of toilets and my poor two nephews that were studying medicine had to dash home anytime they wanted to ease themselves or to have a bath because the bath and toilets in the university were no longer functional and I am not sure the situation has changed. I do not know of any university in Nigeria whether public or private that could provide this kind of social facilities for their students.

I was myself a Pro-Chancellor of Ekiti State University and I struggled unsuccessfully to build hostels for students on campus and I am still hoping and praying that in the course of time, EKSU will be in a position to build hostels for their students. Without students living in hostels, they will pass through the universities but the university will not pass through them. They will be as raw and uncouth when they graduate as they were when they came in. Students acquire good manners and ethics through interacting with other students, by going to debates and various university clubs, going to theatre, eating in cafeterias and in our case in Redeemer’s University, worshiping together.

I must say that most of what is needed to bring out the good in students has already been provided even if in a nucleus form in our new campus and come January, we will have our first convocation on campus starting with the convocation play in our brand new Arts Theatre.

I do not want to paint a picture of perfection because the campus is still developing, buildings have not been completed and several facilities are still to come and no single building with the exception of the nursery and primary school has been painted. Staff housing is uncompleted and many of the staff are living rough, I myself have been staying in hotels but all this is to be expected of pioneers.

Pastor Adeboye himself has made a surprising visit to the students during which time he assured them of his support and even told them that as pioneers, all their names will be engraved on the walls of the auditorium so that future generations would know what they went through as pioneers. What is good for the goose should also be good for the gander and I hope in like way those of us who are staff would also be remembered either while we are still there or when we would have left.

There are no strikes by students or by staff and this is what makes Redeemers University attractive apart from the Christian environment that prevails there. It is hoped that when the university grows to its optimal level of about 10,000 students or more and have full complement of colleges and staff, the sky would be the limit for what is possible. The Proprietor, Pastor Adejare Adeboye wants the university to be one of the best in the world. He also wants the products to be job creators and not job seekers. With trust in God, all things are possible.

Redeemer’s University has been very lucky in the choice of its foundation Vice-Chancellor, Professor Oyewale Tomori, a distinguished Virologist and currently President Nigerian Academy of Sciences. He was an efficient, strict and disciplined Vice-Chancellor who did everything to demystify the office of the Vice-Chancellor and saw himself as primus inter pares among other professors. He related to the students like a father and I always remember him breaking down and shedding tears sometimes when he felt he had to take the difficult decision of sending a student away. He was also a very lucky Vice-Chancellor who had experienced people to work with. He has now been succeeded by Professor Debo Adeyewa, who until he came to Redeemer’s University was one of the Deputy Vice-Chancellors in the Federal University of Technology, Akure. He is a distinguished Meteorologist and Atmospheric Physicist who has brought into the university his passion for hard work and his love for God. He is a much younger person than Tomori and his approach to administration is quite different but no less effective. His obsession is to move the university to Ede as rapidly as possible and also to continue to build on the excellent academic tradition which happily exists in the university. The good fortune of Redeemer’s University has also been in the steady hands of Professor Fola Aboaba who has just retired as Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council and who was, so to say, present at its creation. The university is also lucky to have as its Chancellor, the distinguished historian and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, Professor T.N Tamuno, who brings to his office his well known solidity of character and profundity of thought. And at the top of the hierarchy of the university is Dr. Enoch Adejare Adeboye, the Visitor, who had to be prevailed upon to accept the office of Visitor and who has never interfered in the internal running of the university and who in self-denial has been making huge personal financial contribution to the university and his example has been followed by his wife who has also made personal financial contributions to the university and has been a regular mobiliser of funds for several projects in the university.

On a personal note, I have had tremendous fulfilment by working in this university and I know a little bit about university system and administration having taught in Canada, the USA, and in the West Indies and many universities in Nigeria, particularly in my alma mater, Ibadan and University of Lagos where I spent most of my academic career, I can say without any equivocation or fear of contradiction that Redeemer’s University is one of a kind. This is because we pay attention to the career development and academic growth of our students, we know them and we know their parents, we know whatever peculiar problem each student has, and we try to help in whatever way we can and this young people reciprocate by seeing us as friends, fathers, grand-fathers and this makes for a good community of students and scholars, which is what Redeemer’s University is all about.

The university was the ninth private university to be licensed by the Federal Government. But in terms of ranking today, it would rank among the best if not the best. The major setback has been the non-movement to the permanent site in Ede, but this is being taken care of through the generous investment in the development of the permanent site of billions of naira by its proprietor. All being well, within the next one year, the university should be operating on its permanent site and hopefully commencing the development of its professional colleges of Law, Engineering and Medicine. If the period of the last eight years is something to go by, the future of the university is assured.

In terms of value for money, I think parents and guardians should be satisfied with what they are getting when compared with the astronomical fees payable in other private universities in Nigeria. The icing on the cake is that students in Redeemer’s university are not only taught and educated by a crop of experienced teachers and younger people operating with the same spirit of service to God and man.

On graduation, the students also get special blessing and prayers by the man of God its Proprietor. The university is of course not perfect. No institution created by man can be perfect. Whatever lacuna exists would be bridged and taken care of through the committee system by which most universities operate. The university must ensure that its Vice-Chancellor continues to operate as primus inter pares among a conclave of Professors. One of the things that has damaged and is damaging public universities in Nigeria, is that the position of Vice-Chancellors have suffered a disconnect from company of other professors in the university. Vice-Chancellors in public universities sometimes operate as if they were governors of their universities and go around with a retinue of security guards and even sirens and sometimes administration of public universities are done almost exactly like the state and the Federal Government with retinue of Intelligence Officers and other secret operatives. In such places, there are no debates and Vice-Chancellors operate like Poobah rather than academic leaders. Our various governments have encouraged this development by paying university vice-chancellors double what their professorial colleagues earn and by making the positions political rather than academic. This is why as soon as their terms are over, they rush to the National Universities Commission, NUC to become errand boys of the executive secretary and shamelessly help to send directives and decrees to their various colleagues still left in the system. This is one of the things that are killing the Nigerian public universities and it is our hope and prayer that this ungodly development would not spread to privat e universities. Although signs that these may happen are there especially when proprietors of some of these private universities give orders to vice-chancellors, who are reduced to the status of running dogs. Happily, this is not the situation in Redeemer’s University where the vice-chancellor and his colleagues, both academic and administrative operate as a united family.