The Nation Newspaper

Tag: varsities’

  • Quality assurance in varsities: Umudike example

    The news that 28 professors at the Michael Okpara Federal University of Agriculture in Umudike were demoted came as shock and a surprise to me as a retired university professor. Things have definitely changed in the university system in Nigeria. This watering down of standards was recently underscored when JAMB lowered admission scores into universities to 120 out of a total of 400 marks. Thank God this ridiculous admission policy was roundly condemned by the universities themselves and by parents who felt standards should be higher in the interest of academic integrity of the universities. What apparently happened in Michael Okpara Federal University of Agriculture was that 28 people who were either promoted or appointed professors were deemed unqualified by a committee of joint Senate and Council and were therefore demoted to either Readers (Associate Professors) Senior lecturers or lecturers grade one! How could this have happened in a university that has been in existence for at least two decades or so? Was there no Appointments and Promotions Committee (APC) which meets to do a final approval of an assessment and interview process when presumably papers of potential professors would have been sent out to senior professors who are experts in the fields of candidates being considered for appointments or promotions? In the old days when the university system in Nigeria was small, papers were always sent to the IUC ( inter university council) which was an outfit of the Association of Commonwealth universities (ACU) for assistance in sending papers to experts located in several commonwealth universities. All universities in the commonwealth were members of the ACU. It was therefore axiomatic that a professor in one university, say Ibadan would be accepted as professor in any Commonwealth university either on sabbatical leave or for regular appointment. The hallmark of a good university was the international make up of its staff. All this has of course changed. We do not have the money to recruit international staff anymore because a British university professor for example earns £100,000 per year which is about N50 million. Recently, the British government issued a warning to British universities vice chancellors to defend their salaries of £150,000 per year and this is about N75 million. Vice chancellors in Nigerian universities earn N12 million per year while their professor colleagues earn lower than half of that. The point I am trying to make is that it appears that people are being made professors because of the salaries attached to the category or class of appointees and not as a mark of academic distinction and excellence.

    Having said this, it is still puzzling to me why somebody who is a lecturer grade one would be appointed a professor. An extremely brilliant person could be promoted from senior lecturer to professor, but even then, his papers would have to have been assessed by external assessors suggested by his head of department or Dean of his or her faculty or college to guide the vice chancellor who will make the final decision about the external assessor. In all this process, anonymity of the external assessor is the rule rather than the exception. In extremely rare and exceptional cases, the number of years as teacher may not be relevant in appointing a person a professor.

    In the case of Michael Okpara Federal University of Agriculture, the vice chancellor and the council stand condemned and indicted and should be removed immediately if they are still in office. I am sure this travesty of the system is not limited to the university alone; the practice pervades the entire university system especially the new federal universities and some of their state counterparts. It is also a reflection of the low academic calibre of some of these vice chancellors. In the rush to establish federal universities, assistant professors (lecturers) from some American universities and senior lecturers from existing Nigerian universities were appointed vice chancellors. These unqualified people’s first action as vice chancellors was to promote themselves as professors and after doing this, they had no moral right to deny promotion to their academic colleagues and friends. I personally know of a case of a former student of mine who moved from lecturer to professor the same year by tactically shopping around and moving from one university to the other until arriving at his destination of professorship. This has been made possible by the ballooning number of universities without corresponding planning for staffing them. I know of a case of a young lecturer in a hard area of computer science applying for a job of senior lecturer in another university. As soon as he got it and without even assuming the position, made a bid as in an auction or in a market for a higher post in another university and got appointed a professor. There are professors and there are professors of course! This academic title has become like chieftainship title in the usual bad tradition in Nigeria. Academic trade unionists also sometimes blackmail their vice chancellors to make them professors and many weak vice chancellors have surrendered to these people by manipulating the appointments process to bastardize the system. If we are to be honest with ourselves, there is a systemic problem in Nigerian universities. First of all the crowding of the university system by the new mushrooms of federal universities and their private counterparts has led to too many unqualified people masquerading as academics in our universities. Any professor who is neither known by colleagues here at home and abroad is not fit to parade himself as a professor unless of course he is a band leader of one our musical groups! The calibre of people being made vice chancellors should be looked into because academic leadership in a university can only be provided by a true academic who knows his onions. Respect for academic excellence can only emanate from a boss who has gone through the academic grill and not from an academic parvenu or upstart who came to his or her position through political jobbery. The council of any university is crucial to maintaining academic integrity. A situation where failed politicians or any politician at all are routinely appointed pro chancellors and chairmen of councils does not augur well for the future. These buccaneers do not belong to universities because to them public office is for material exploitation and self-aggrandizement. Governments at state and federal levels must find other ways of compensating their colleagues after elections. There are several knowledgeable retired academics who can bring their experience to bear on supervising the universities and maintaining oversight responsibility for the good of the universities. There should be a stop to further licensing of new universities by the NUC. The more universities are established, the downward spiral the universities will experience in its academic integrity.

    Most universities in the country have units of Quality Assurance charged with ensuring academic offering in terms of good teaching and laboratory supervision of students as well as ensuring that lecturers go to their classes to teach. The unit also ensures the integrity of examinations and fairness in assessments. All this is good but any academic who has to be monitored to do what is necessary by my own book does not belong in the university system. What this Quality Assurance should also do is check the academic claims and certificates of those who are teaching. It will surprise us what we would find. In 1979 when I was director of the NUC office in Washington D.C, we found two members of staff in the Department of Business Administration in University of Lagos who falsely claimed they had PhD. from an American university. On investigation we found out that the so-called university was only a certificate-issuing one room office in California. When confronted with this fact, one of the people involved disappeared into the thin air and we never heard from him again and the other begged to go back to a regular university. I do not know why this latter person got away with this lenient treatment on the grounds that his Masters’ degree was genuine why the doctorate degree was fake. He later returned to the university and several years later became professor and head of department!

    The situation in Michael Okpara University has exposed the soft underbelly of the Nigerian universities. The federal government can set up independent audit committees of retired professors to look into the appointment and promotion processes of these universities and try to streamline them. The state universities should do the same. The NUC which has spread the joy of university ownership to all and sundry should be empowered to do the same for all private universities. Their reports should be submitted to the various councils of these universities for their implementation. Quality assurance should spread to every aspect of the university system from staff to students in order to remove the stain of low quality staff as well as people holding unmerited positions of academic leadership in our universities. This is the only way to avoid everybody in the universities being tarred with the brush of academic fraud which sadly pervades the entire university system in Nigeria and casting doubt on the quality of academic degrees and certificates awarded by Nigerian universities.

  • Babalakin seeks better funding for varsities

    Babalakin seeks better funding for varsities

    Pro-Chancellor and Chairman, Governing Council, University of Lagos (UNILAG) Dr. Wale Babalakin (SAN) has appealed for better funding for universities to enable them provide quality education.

    He said it is sad that no Nigerian university is among the first 800 universities in the world.

    Babalakin spoke at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) Alumni Awards, which was held at the weekend at the Oriental Hotel in Lagos. The event was to celebrate UNILAG’s 55th anniversary.

    The lawyer and businessman, who chaired the event, said: “In its 55 years of existence, UNILAG has contributed immensely to the development of Nigeria. This assertion does not require an elaborate justification. The quality of its alumni association is a direct testimony to its remarkable contribution.

    “The Nigerian educational system is now at a crossroad. The very promising start has slowed down significantly. It is a poor reflection on the Nigerian educational system that no Nigerian university is rated among the first 800 universities in the world. Education provides stimulus for development. Good education definitely enhances the velocity of development.

    “A situation where our universities cannot compete favourably with other tertiary institutions in the world places our citizens on a relatively weaker footing in the struggle for the emancipation of our country. We have to change the structure of our universities to give them the impetus to do far better than where we are today.”

    Babalakin hailed the Federal Government for granting substantial autonomy to universities, thereby empowering them to choose the best candidates as officers.

    Calling for better funding of universities, the lawyer said: “A principal challenge today is the funding of these universities. According to the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC), the estimated average cost of training an undergraduate to full accreditation status as at 2010 was $3,364 per annum, exclusive of living expenses. Without allowing for inflation over the last seven years, this is N1.2 million per undergraduate. With UNILAG’s student population of about 16,000 full time students and about 34,000 other students, UNILAG will require about N61 billion per annum to run a good university.

    “There are 40 federal universities in Nigeria of various sizes. The cumulative amount that would be required per annum for university education alone will not be less than N1.5 trillion per annum. It is clear that government, no matter how willing it is, cannot provide all the money required for this exercise. It cannot spend all its resources on a single item. Health, Education, Defence and Infrastructure are also the responsibility government, which it has to provide for.

    “We have to find a creative way of funding education.”

    Babalakin said UNILAG’s Alumni is an assembly of egg heads, who are capable of proffering solutions to societal problems. He urged the association to be determined to remove every stumbling block in the way of attaining quality education.

  • 10,000 Nigerians admitted in U.S. varsities

    Ten thousand Nigerian students are among over one million international students admitted into United States (U.S.) universities this year, U.S. Consul-General in Lagos Mr. John Bray said over the weekend.

    He spoke at a College and Career Fair, organised by Education USA and the Foreign Commercial Service of the U.S. embassy.

    Bray said the fair, which attracted 25 American universities to Lagos, was meant to expose Nigerian students to existing educational opportunities in the U.S.

    His words: “This year, the number of international students in the United States climbed to over one million globally.

    “More than 10,000 of these students are from Nigeria.

    “That is more than the year before but there could be more. Let me say that America remains a leading destination for international students.

    “Nigerians’ interest in studying in the United States is an indication of the strong ties between Nigeria and the U.S.

    ” The people-to-people exchanges are an important component of strengthening our bilateral relations,” he said.

    The annual event recorded a large turnout of students, their parents and guardians, admissions officers from 25 American colleges and universities, including The George Washington University, Drexel University, University of Wisconsin and Western Kentucky University.

  • ASUU : Varsities to get N220bn within one month

    ASUU : Varsities to get N220bn within one month

    University lecturers are close to calling off their one-month-old ASUU strike after reaching a fresh agreement with the Federal Government on their demands.

     Top of the agreement  reached at a 15-hour meeting that ended early yesterday in Abuja,is the immediate release,by government, of N220 billion to the universities to fund the revitalization of federal universities in the country.

    The sum is expected to be paid not later than next month.

    The money is to enable the institutions buy working tools needed for effective discharge of their responsibilities.

     Representatives of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU)  are scheduled to present details of the agreement to the National Executive Council of the union within the next one week for ratification, and possible calling off of the strike.

     Besides, government at the   conciliatory meeting, coordinated by Labour and Employment Minister,Chris Ngige, agreed to commence the immediate payment of the salary shortfall to the lecturers.

    Ngige told reporters at the end of the meeting that government had also commenced the payment of the earned allowances of members of the union.

    He said the meeting also discussed how to set up the National Universities Pension Management Company as well as the issue of university staff schools and the Treasury Single Account.

     His words: “We also discussed the issue of university staff schools and treasury single account with a view to finding how the system could accommodate funds for research grants that need to be independent of the government. We also discussed the issue of how the Federal Government could be involved in the running of state universities.”

    He said the meeting agreed to set up a seven-man committee on the implementation of the proposals.

    The union and the federal ministry of education will each be represented by three persons on the committee, while government will be represented by one person who will serve as chairman.

    Continuing, Ngige said:  ”There’s the fund for revitalization of public universities and the issue of Earned Academic Allowances; the issue of University Staff Schools on which there is a court judgment; the issue of National Universities Pension Management Company; and the issue of salary shortfalls for lecturers and staff of universities. There is the issue of TSA exemption and the problems in the state universities. All are the issues that ASUU felt that government should address.

    “Most of these issues stemmed from the 2009 agreement that government had with ASUU and also from the 2013 Memorandum of Understanding that the government had with ASUU. Government is a continuum. Most of those issues were not issues that cropped up from the Buhari administration, we inherited them.

    “But be that as it may, we are to ready to address those issues.

    “But ASUU has to take back this our proposal to their organs, so we decided that there’s an agreement for government to make some funds available in September and October to show that they are not repudiating their agreement and to also show sign of good faith.

    “On the issue of Earned Academic Allowances, we have listened and payment has started in that direction and the same with staff schools. Government is though not appealing, we have agreed that the decision should be conveyed to the various universities.

    “The Issue of NUPENCO was addressed and ways have been fashioned out for the registration of that company. Salary shortfalls for lecturers and university staff were also addressed and government has shown their commitment and evidence that payments have started in order to liquidate the outstanding allowances.

    “The issue of TSA exemption was also discussed and an agreement or proposal was muted by which the Central Bank would open a special account.

      ”State universities which have been the concern for ASUU and everybody who has been looking for quality education in the country was also discussed and the Minister of Education was mandated to take the memo to the council of state and the Federal Executive Council.

    “Based on these discussions, ASUU leadership will consult with its organs and revert back to government within one week. They will consult with their organs with a view to calling off the strike. And we expect them that within one week, they will get back to government. These are the highlights of the meeting and I can tell you that the meeting took place in very cordial atmosphere.”

    Also speaking, ASUU President, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, said the proposals made by government were concrete but said the ASUU team would take the offers back to their colleagues  for consideration within the next one week, and the position of the members would be communicated to government.

    He said: “We have had useful deliberations and we had some concrete proposals that we will take back to our members as part of our consultations.

    “And like the Honourable Minister of Labour has said, we plan to come back here to take decisions as advised by our members.”

    Also at the marathon meeting were the President of the Nigeria Labour Comgress, Comrade Ayuba Wabba and the Special Adviser to the President on National Assembly Matters, Ita Enang.

    ASUU embarked on the strike on August 13, following government’s failure to implement the agreement reached with the union in November 2016.

  • The shame of varsities’ toilets

    Nigeria is arguably the champion of Africa, given its enormous, robust human and material resources as well as population size of 180 million or thereabouts.  Therefore, it should be a vivid beacon of hope and excellence for the other countries in the continent.  This is achievable through the lenses of world-class educational systems particularly at the university level.  Nigeria is not doing badly, in terms of sheer weight of numbers.  Thus, for example, the country has over 40 federal universities and at least 38 state-owned ones.  But sadly enough, the morphology and content of the grammar of standard of the learning environment are very poor.  My emphasis here is on the university hostels including toilet facilities that are in a sorry state.  The university is a special institution committed to the development or nurturing of refined personalities capable of combining knowledge in a myriad of disciplines with good character. The essence of all these engagements is the improvement of the human condition across scales.

    Every university needs a pleasant, clean learning environment in order to produce gentle ladies and men in the final analysis.  The campus is not supposed to be a breeding ground for dirty, violent and rascally graduates.  The impact of the physical and social environment on students same as other Homo sapiens is certainly monumental.  Refined university graduates will plough back their vibrant knowledge into the larger system or society.  This is the cornerstone of social sustainability among other things.  Therefore, it is not a luxury to ensure that clean hostels and by extension, toilets are provided for students.  Indeed, clean hostel facilities are a necessity as opposed to an option.  This reality also determines to a great extent, the academic performance of each student in the long run.

    In my own opinion, provision of clean hostels including toilet facilities is part of the process of character building embedded in profundity.  University education should not be reduced to the sphere of mere awarding of certificates to students after completing their studies.  Every human being is to a certain degree, a product of his socio-physical environment.  Suffice it to say, that after training, education is what is left as a perpetual legacy.  That is the beauty of university training.  This underscores the reason why each university management team must develop a new narrative of total commitment to cleanliness.  Thus, for example, the motto of the University of Ibadan, Ibadan is “Knowledge and Good Character”.  Other universities have their own too.  The motto of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife is “Learning and Culture”.  “Naturally Ahead” is the motto for Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.

    The founding fathers of these great universities knew what they were saying and doing because they had visions and were no doubt, on a mission.  Therefore, each management team must search its mind or heart to find out, how its university stands today, in terms of living up to the high ideals of the founding fathers.  Much can still be done despite the current lean budgets.  But this will entail careful re-prioritisation of the needs of students and the university as a whole.  Today’s public universities (with a few exceptions), have very dilapidated toilet facilities leading to several unhygienic practices by students – the movers and shakers of our tomorrows.

    It is shocking to say here, that most of the toilets cannot be directly used by students due largely to high population quite above the carrying capacity of each hall and/or the university in general.  No running water!  No functioning boreholes! Where there are a few boreholes, electric power supply is not available!  Not unexpectedly, the whole place stinks to high heavens.  For goodness sake, is this the kind of milieu needed for producing future leaders?  It is time to begin to rescue Nigerian public universities from the swamp of filthiness into which they have been sinking fast, at least in the last 15 years or so.  It is laughable (though painful too) that our often maligned students (victims of a system bereft of ideas, proactivity and financial prudence) now use potties like very young children in Day-Care centres.  No student, no matter how careless will directly use a toilet where maggots and flies among other harmful organisms are permanently “holding meetings”.

    Unfortunately, contemporary Nigerian university students are becoming more voiceless on a daily basis, in the face of high-handedness, insensitivity and unwarranted arrogance on the part of the management team.  The vibrant culture of academic democracy – a reflection of checks and balances, is on its way to extinction.  This culture of intellectual retrogression can hardly be found in smaller West African countries like Benin and Ghana.  Parents whose children or wards are readying themselves for resumption in these universities must not forget to buy potties for them.  Potties are some of the new valuables.  Young ladies use more potties than men in their halls or hostels.  You and I can guess the coping strategy of male students in this connection.  This is definitely an eyesore and indeed, a mind sore as Professor Niyi Osundare once said, in a public lecture he gave many years ago at the University of Ibadan.

    This relatively recent development diminishes our students especially the female gender.  But they have no choice, if they want to reduce the risk of infection to the barest minimum.  The management does not need to look the other way, because this problem or challenge is not insurmountable after all!   Companies producing potties should please bear with me.  They should not be angry with me because currently, they are smiling to the bank more regularly than hitherto.  This is because more potties are in demand by students across the board.  This is a blessing in disguise for the companies.  However, this blessing may be short-lived, once university management teams see my lamentation here, as a genuine effort to liberate our hostels and by extension, students from the abyss of filthiness.

    The popular rhetoric of inadequate funding of universities is not a solution.  The real solution here is prudent management of resources and the consciousness to make positive history for posterity.  Certainly, more funds will have positive expansionary effect on the university system generally.  But this will only be possible if the managers change their current narrative.  That is to say, that if they get their priorities straight.  It is on record, that a lot of federal universities were well funded during the last administration headed by Dr. Goodluck Jonathan.  How was the money spent?  What was it spent for?  What were the priorities of each university management in the face of such largesse?  Problems or challenges of over-crowded hostels and over-used toilet facilities can be successfully addressed, if the management has the political will.  But if those in charge didn’t see anything wrong with dirty toilets, then positive change would be difficult to make.  It is dangerous to continue to gloss over this issue, thereby sending a wrong signal to our students and of course, the wide world that hygienic culture has no space in the contemporary university consciousness.  I will illustrate here, the seriousness of this matter, in order to help those few self-seeking, myopic, unpatriotic academics and administrators who might want to trivialise the subject, by pretending that there is no fire on the mountain.

    Some five years ago or thereabouts, a few students from the University of Ibadan were lodged in an unoccupied palace during an archaeological field training in Osun State.  Within the two-week period, the surroundings of the sacred building – the heart and soul of the host community, were in a thorough mess.  Human faecal and other material wastes turned the palace into a filthy space.  Consequently, one of the high chiefs holding the fort while the community was searching for a new king (oba) cursed the students for offending their sensibilities through the lens of desecration.  As a result of this poor behaviour, the departmental authorities could no longer use the sites in the community as a field school.  Although this behaviour is condemnable by all standards, we should not forget in a hurry, the centrality of physical and social environmental determinism in the evolution of human personality.  It is against this backdrop, that all public universities in the country must begin a behavioural revolution with a special emphasis on hostel facilities.  This is doable, in the face of unalloyed commitment to the common good, and indeed, our tomorrows.  The current narrative of lack of proactivity and near-complete indifference to the sufferings of Nigerian students has to change.

     

    • Professor Ogundele writes from University of Ibadan.

  • New ‘power-pack’ for varsities

    •An initiative that is better late than never

    The Federal Government is moving closer to fulfilling its promise to get more creative and aggressive about improving power generation in the country. The first beneficiary of its readiness to take advantage of innovation in renewable energy technology is the federal university system. A combination of efforts by Ministry of Power’s new emphasis on off-grid Independent Power Projects (IPPs) and Ministry of Education’s Energising Education Programme Initiative (EEPI) through Public Private Partnership has commenced provision  of  uninterrupted power to 40 federal universities and teaching hospitals. This project is an outgrowth of Nigeria’s earlier agreement with the German government under the Nigeria-German Partnership Project to build solar farms across 40 tertiary institutions.

    At a ceremony for signing of Memorandum of Understanding on behalf of the Federal Government by the Rural Electricity Agency (REA) and some vice chancellors, on provision of 10 megawatts of electricity to meet power needs of each of the universities, the Vice Chancellor of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, Professor Abdulrahman Ibrahim, aptly remarked: ”I believe it has the potential to do a lot for the universities. I want to commend the stakeholders for this particular innovation.”

    We commend the initiators of the project: ministries of power and education and the German government for this long-overdue intervention in decades-old infrastructural deficit that had, to say the least, watered down quality of research, teaching and learning in our universities. The readiness for innovation that informs this initiative on the part of the Federal Government contrasts starkly with discouragement of University of Ife, Ile-Ife, (now Obafemi Awolowo University) to make its dam produce electricity in the late 1970s, on the excuse that generation of electricity, like establishment of railway, was sealed in the envelope of central government’s Exclusive List.

    This project illustrates that, despite continued failure of post-privatisation generating and distributing companies to meet industrial and residential electricity needs, citizens can benefit from new opportunities made possible by investment in alternative energy in countries such as Finland, Germany, Spain, UK, USA, China, and India. Given the negative impact of inadequate electricity in the last 40 years on quality of education in the country, we welcome the synergy between the power and education ministries to strengthen the education sector through provision of critical infrastructure. When successfully completed, off-grid solar power for higher institutions will end suffering of university students and teachers, while energising research output of universities and quality of health care at the teaching hospitals.

    Moreover, completion of the project provides a new opportunity for the country to benefit from new technology for alternative energy, a promise that current local centres for nuclear, solar, and other renewable energy had been unable to meet after three decades of existence. Apart from seizing the opportunity of reliable energy to improve their research on solar power, the universities need to explore opportunities for other forms of renewable energy that Nigeria’s environment can support: biomass, wind, ocean waves, and conversion of waste to power.

    For example, some of the large cities: Lagos, Kano, Ibadan, Kaduna, and Port Harcourt are fertile grounds for waste-to-energy technology. These forms of renewable power can add to the country’s energy mix and provide emission-free power to both grid-connected and off-grid renewable energy for other levels of education, currently starved of electricity. Lack of electricity for pre-university education can diminish gains from uninterrupted power to universities sourcing students from secondary schools with little or no access to power and adequate information.

    While commending all the initiators of this project, we urge the Federal Government to provide all the support needed to ensure the initiative does not migrate to the list of the country’s abandoned projects. We also enjoin state governments to consider similar projects for state universities, polytechnics, general hospitals, and primary health centres.

  • ASUU denies issuing statement on hike in varsities’ fees

    The Chairman, Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Ibadan Chapter, Dr. Deji Omole, has called for investigation into an alleged false and damaging report on hike in universities’ fees.

    Omole, while expressing dismay over the report attributed to him, denied issuing any statement to any media house on increment of fees in 38 universities.

    The union chief described the report, which originated fromthe News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), as mischievous.

    Omolesaid he was never in Abuja and did not speak with any medium nor issue any statement concerning fees hike in universities.

    He said ASUU is a well-coordinated union and places factual data in public domain in an incontrovertible manner.

    The union chief called on Director-General of NAN, which was quoted by national dailies as the source of the news, to investigate the matter.

    Omole, who noted that he was shocked when people called him over the news item, noted that ASUU as a responsible pro-public education and masses union must not be linked to independent investigations conducted on education to make it authentic.

    He stated that his comments on the second year anniversary of President Muhammadu Buhari was clear on poor funding and inadequate budgetary provisions for public education.

    Omole maintained that both Federal and state governments continue to play politics with the lives of the children of the masses by planning to deny them quality education.

    “I need to place it on record that I was never in Abuja nor issued any press release to NAN or any other news medium in Abuja as falsely presented to the public.

    “Therefore, I do not know the sources of the figures quoted in the report. ASUU is a well-coordinated union, who will carry out incontrovertible research and present this to the public.

    “It is the duty of journalists to carry out investigation and if you have done that, why can’t you state that to the public? Why must you link it to ASUU that never spoke to you?

    “Is it because NAN is a federal institution and does not want government to sanction them for stating the obvious? This is bad journalism practice. For me, my position remains that the government has not lived up to the electioneering campaigns of funding public education. We shall continue to fight for the funding of public education and resist any attempt to deny children of the poor masses public education,” he stated.

     

    ‘ABUAD has not increased school fees’

    The Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD) has condemned the publication in some national newspapers on hike in universities’ fees.

    The said publication listed ABUAD among 38 Nigerian universities that recently increased their school fees.

    In a statement yesterday, the university’s Head, Corporate Affairs Tunde Olofintila, said: “We want to say in clear, unambiguous and unmistakable terms that the information, which was attributed to the Chairman of the University of Ibadan Chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Dr. Deji Omole, is absolute falsehood with intent to misinform and mislead the public and deliberately distort the facts and circumstances surrounding our fees regime in ABUAD.

    “No increase in fees in any programme in ABUAD:

    We would like to say very equivocally and unambiguously that very much to the contrary of this spurious and speculative claim and for the records, we have not increased our tuition fees. For the avoidance of doubt, we have not in any way increased the tuition fees from N675,000 to N1,075,000 as claimed in the publication or at all.

    “We make bold to say that our fees have remained the same in the last two years, the biting economic recession the country is wading through notwithstanding. To ensure that we continue to provide quality and functional education, we have been subsidising the education of our students with part of our Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and additional funding by our Founder and Chancellor, Aare Afe Babalola, OFR, CON, SAN and this will continue to be the case.

    “We take a serious objection to the opening paragraph of the said publication which said: ‘Thirty eight universities across the country have increased their tuition as a result of poor funding by the Federal and state governments’.

    “Ours is not a Federal Government owned university, but a Federal Government licensed non-profit private university, which does not enjoy any form of funding either from the Federal or state government. It is the peak of mischief for anyone or body to claim that we have increased our tuition fees because of poor funding by government.

    “We are, therefore, demanding for a retraction of this obviously offensive, misleading and malicious publication.”

  • Democracy on trial in varsities

    Last month, Nigeria celebrated the 18th year of uninterrupted democracy. While fellow countrymen still basked in the euphoria of celebration, the management of the University of Ibadan (UI) suspended democracy on the campus. In what many saw as highhandedness, the school suspended Students’ Union activities. I was forced to ask if we are really in a democratic society. Of what substance is the ‘democracy’ we celebrated if it is not rooted in due process even at the university level?

    As a sub-entity of the larger society, campuses should be the centre for cross-fertilisation of ideas that will transform the larger society. To the best of my knowledge, the cardinal principle of democracy is a system that guarantees freedom of speech, association, religion and equality before the law. Without these fundamental principles, democracy ceases to exist. If these common principles are not entrenched in our tertiary institutions, the implication would be telling on our sense of value for democracy.

    Whereas, the greatest nations were not, in the actual sense, built on the foundation of engineering designs, nor on the intriguing genius of skilled artistry, or the magnificent of towering skyscrapers; rather, such nations are built on ageless regard for freedom, which translates further to freedom to think and innovate.

    Where freedom is valued, it becomes the compass for progress into the daily thoughts, actions and progress of the people. This has been exemplified in the beautiful stories of nations, such as the United States, Japan, United Arab Emirates and Germany to mention a few.

    In a situation where our universities’ authorities can close schools at will, rusticate students at the slightest provocation by students demanding basic amenities, such as water and electricity, a terrible message is being passed on to an uncountable army of young people, who will pass through the system. The present case of UI is even worst. Common plastic Identity (ID) Cards for students, the school cannot produce, having postponed examination twice for that reason.

    On our campuses, logic does not prevail anymore. Students’ suggestions do not hold water again. We now run universities to produce dullards and ‘yes men’ who are incapable of raising or forming opinions or repelling perceived evil. In a situation where Students’ Union is not suspended, university management will do everything to compromise electoral process.

    At the University of Ilorin (UNILORIN), a perceived vibrant aspirant was disqualified on the eve of the election to pave way for the management’s anointed candidate. In my alma mater, Lagos State University (LASU), the same thing happened. The invention of the electronic voting system is now being seen as a means to rob students of their mandate.

    Ditto University of Lagos (UNILAG), where a student, Olurunfemi Adeyeye, has been suspended for more than a year for his post on Facebook about the ills in the school. As that was not enough, he was persecuted, incarcerated and remanded in the prison for demanding justice. Olaniyan Mohammed, the UNILAG’s union president, was rusticated for leading students in call for the management to wake up to its responsibilities. The union’s Public Relations Officer was stopped from participating in the mandatory Nigerian Law School Vocational training and capacity building programme. Who will pay for this lost time? Sadly, these suspensions are done without recourse to upholding the cardinal principle of democracy – fair hearing.

    These raise many questions over the rationale behind the existence of our ivory tower, a place that is projected to be over and above all other sectors of the society. Do we still have professors of Law? What were they doing when students were rusticated without recourse to the principles of rule of law? Maybe professors of conflicts resolutions and other ‘social scientists’ are not teaching in our higher institutions again.

    Have they forgotten so soon? But they taught us that conflict is inevitable, the ability to resolve it make us better as a people. The early our universities deviate from these intellectually destructive ventures the better for us. Our ivory towers must begin to shake hands with the society in constructive manners. The system must begin to provide pragmatic solutions to our challenges by laying the proper foundation for our value system.

     

    • Nurudeen is a student of the Nigerian Law School, Lagos campus

     

  • World Bank invests $70m in Nigerian varsities

    The World Bank has invested $70m in 10 universities to promote Science and Technology in Nigeria.

    The beneficiaries include: Redeemers University, Mowe; Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria; University of Jos; University of Benin, Benin; and African University of Science and Technology, Abuja.

    Others are:  University of Port-Harcourt; Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife; Bayero University, Kano; Benue State University, Makurdi; and Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta.

    This gesture is in line with the bank’s African Centre for Excellence (ACE) project aimed at making the African region competitive with regard to science and technology.

    World Bank Lead Economist Global Practice Education, Andreas Blom, made this known at the opening of a three-day Regional Workshop of the Africa Centres of Excellence (ACE) held at the Intercontinental Hotel, Victoria Island,Lagos, last week.

    Bloom said of the $165m WB deposited for 22 ACEs project around the African region, $70m has been invested in 10 universities in Nigeria to boost science and technology, which according to him, is now competitive around the world.

    He said Nigeria being the biggest country in the African Region, has strong universities that have little or no recognition outside the country.

    Said Blom: “Nigeria has strong universities but they are not well recognised outside. They are very few regional students coming into Nigeria. So the quality needs to be raised.

    “A lot of Nigerians are going outside, spending lot of money on quality education. Nigerian talents can remain in Nigeria and be educated in Nigeria but we need better universities. We need good teachers, curriculum and laboratories. For Nigeria, we are funding several areas of science. For instance, we are on infectious diseases.

    “In particular, there is the Centre of Excellence for infectious diseases at Redeemers University. That was the testing site for the Ebola crises in Nigeria. They were able to test and turn around the result within six hours. It was critical information and scientific centre that confirmed it was Ebola and allowed the government to very quickly respond and hence contained the virus.

    “The other area we are funding is post-harvest technologies. Around 40 per cent of crops and foods are wasted due to poor storage, transportation and loss. Imagine all that food that would have been available for the hungry if we had the right technologies and knowledge among the people handling the food. Also the reproductive health is another area, more practical science around oil sector. Nigeria is the largest oil producing country in the region but a lot of experts, foreigners come in to take up jobs in these areas, but we are trying to educate Nigerian engineers, chemical engineers, petroleum engineers that can take up well positioned places and have value added in the Nigerian oil industry.”

    He noted that the WB African Centre for Excellence project, which started in 2014, would elapse in 2019. However, Blom said WB might consider postponing the deadline.

    The Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, said the commission, which hosted the event, is impressed with the project having gone round the ACEs and is committed to achieving its aims.

    He said: ‘’NUC has completed programme resource verification and national accreditation of the programmes of the centre. We are glad to report that almost all the programmes, I think about 96 per cent of them got full accreditation. We would like to see the ACEs and NUC working in close partnership with research institutes to address developmental challenges. NUC would be working closely with the Ministry of Science and Technology as well as relevant stakeholders, to ensure the achievement of project goals”’’he added.

    Minister of State for Education Prof Anthony Gozie Anwukah, said Federal Government is proud of the ACE project and satisfied with progress made. He said the Federal Government through ACE engagement is revolutionising higher education in areas of research and post graduate training, and would ensure sustainability of the project beyond the World Bank 2019 intervention deadline.

  • NIPR begins varsities, poly debate on PR

    An inter university and polytechnic debate kicked off yesterday  as part of activities to mark the annual Public Relations Week of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, (NIPR).  This is courtesy of the Lagos State chapter of NIPR.

    Called the University PR Challenge, the debate, which is the first of its kind in Sub-Saharan Africa, would end on Friday, next week.

    According to the organiser, the contest aims to discover participants’ talents, capacity and oratory skills.

    Lagos State chapter of Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, NIPR, and Annual General Meeting, Mass Communication students of Pan Atlantic University, University of Lagos, (Unilag), Lagos State Polytechnic, (Laspotech), Yaba College of Technology, (Yabatech), CALEB University and Lagos State University (LASU), will hold a debate on PR.

    Chairman of Lagos NIPR, Olusegun McMedal, said the event is also as an avenue to build camaraderie among complementary professions in marketing communications and management. “There will also be health check-up and awareness walk for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD),” he added. The event began yesterday and would end Friday next week.

    McMedal stated that there will be a leadership lecture on the theme: Exemplary leadership: Public Relations art for nation-state building, holding at the MUSON Centre on Wednesday next week.

    Other activities according to him, would include novelty football match, and dinner

    “The week will climax with a dinner with corporate Lagos; a special fundraising gala towards the building of a secretariat for Lagos NIPR. The dinner will bring together all the professionals occupying public relations roles in the public and private sector to give life to the dream of having a befitting edifice for the chapter.”