• ‘Allegations against me frivolous’
Uneasy, they say, lies the head that wears the crown The outgoing Vice-Chancellor, University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), Prof Bartho Okolo, in this interview, bares his mind to ADEGUNLE OLUGBAMILA on the various battles he fought in his determination to sanitise the system. He says his
five-year tenure gives him the belief that it is about time the government allowed private participation in public universities if significant progress must be witnessed in the nation’s ivory towers.
ON June 9, the Vice-Chancellor University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) Prof Bartho Okolo will sign off, after completing his five-year tenure in the university.
However, the professor of Bioprocesss Physiology has had a rather bumpy ride ever since he mounted the saddle with one allegation or another against his administration.
For his critics, some who have taken the war to the media, Prof Okolo would not respond. He told this reporter at his office in UNN last week that he does not engage his critics in a war on the pages of newspaper. His strength, he said, lies in the rule of law. Besides, he believes what keeps a man going is not the amount of criticisms against him, but his ability to follow his conscience. According to him, any discerning mind knows he has given his best to the 52-year-old institution, leaving the rest for posterity.
“For any doubting Thomas, what I tell them is to compare the situation of this university before we came in five years ago and what it is now before passing judgment. I have received lots of criticism. People alleged that I stole this and asking the government to sack me. But while the rumour went on, we were focused on what we set out to do; and this is why we don’t go to the media; rather, we were busy working, believing that our work can speak for us.”
Okolo said that his war to obliterate the status quo on accession of office, ran him on a collision course with certain interest in the university.
“I have been in this university for over 30 years, so, I am no stranger to the system. When we came on board, we realised that there was so much corruption in the system, and that some people were responsible for swallowing this money; even the ones wearing collar calling themselves reverends, they were all armed robbers. We commenced with the auditing of faculties, department and even the School of Postgraduate Studies, blocking loopholes. Then, we began to catch them one after the other. Those that we caught we just shoved them aside. Unfortunately, because we did not prosecute them some of them still talk. That was how we were able to stop the leakages; and then, we began to engage in a comprehensive rehabilitation of this university.
“They made series of threats that we will slump or even die, but we thank God that we haven’t died till today,” he said.
He said when his distracters could no longer have their way, they began peddling rumours that he (Okolo) was helping himself with the government’s allocations to the university.
“Our monthly allocation as overhead cost is about N18 million every month. But what we spend on public power supply alone is about N30 million monthly. This is not to talk of the countless infrastructure that keep springing up at every corner of the university. At a point, they (distractors) even began to look for money that does not exist,” he added.
As an accomplished academic, Okolo said he believes university standard is one worldwide regardless of whether the said university is Oxford or UNN, noting that any university that dreams to be world-class, and also does not wish to be left out in the ongoing globalisation, must not compromise such benchmarks.
Okolo said he soon found out that some lecturers indulged in certain ‘un-academic acts,’ such as sale of handouts, sexual abuse, convertion of a section of their office for business use, and late release of results, among others.
“Before we assumed office, there were cases that students after five or seven years that they had finished, were still looking for one missing result or the other at the examination office. When I assumed office, I told my staff that this is a university and we run semester here, so at the end of the semester, every result must be available. Any lecturer that defaults after three weeks of a semester will have his or her salary withheld.
“They (lecturers) sell handouts too. They force girls to sleep with them. I have some of the documents here. I believe there are proper way of approaching a girl. You cannot force a young girl to go to bed with you; that, to me, is also ignorance. Eleven Senior lecturers are on suspension for various allegations and one of them is sacked already.”
Okolo described as frivolous most of the allegations raised against him. He said despite this, his goodwill and reputation got him attracted to lots of donors locally and internationally.
‘’Despite that we are in need of more facilities, yet, we tried as much as we can to have our specification. One key point we held on to is that we did not allow anybody to come and build ramshackle structures for us. We already have our own standard which we present to our intending donors. That is why many of the projects you see around are of quality, which will leave imprints in the sand of time.
“Besides, we did not compromise standard or cut corners on any of the projects we carried out through our IGR. We used the best construction outfits we could afford in Nigeria, all because we wanted quality and something we can leave for posterity. We do not go through middlemen and we don’t collect 10 per cent. Some even thought we were collecting kickbacks. I’m saying this authoritatively and you can go and find out from our contractors,” Okolo said.
An apostle of privatisation, Okolo believes the government’s handing of the running of universities to individuals will put workers on their feet and make the university more productive. His experience as the chief executive of UNN, he explained, has further exposed him to lots of the abnormalities in the nation’s universities.
“Anybody who is earning salary in the public university system is not working for his salary but seeing it as a government’s grant. Unfortunately, this problem is general in our universities. I have seen some who claim to be professors in this university, yet they cannot take their professorship beyond the gate of UNN. University standard is one anywhere. If you have a professorial chair and you have not won a grant, you don’t have any business staying there. The implication (of a professorial chair) is on research and communication of knowledge.”
But rather than sack the redundant, Okolo said the university began the recruitment of young but knowledgeable graduates of UNN with either first class or those who emerged as best graduating students.
“We do not discriminate in absorbing them (first class). The process is strictly by merit! At present, we have about 300 of them doing their masters or PhDs in institutions abroad. We were able to achieve this via effective international collaborations and exchange programmes.”
Last year, we won $8 million grant from the World Bank. With this, we were able to buy more infrastructure into our university. we were also able to facilitate scholarships for our young graduates studying abroad via our various international collaborations. I’m happy to tell you that we have just won another $4.6 million which will also go for the same purpose.
The Head of Department of Microbiology Prof Moneke Anene, told our reporter that some of achievements of Okolo are part of his (Okolo) roadmap which he presented to a team of interviewers before he eventually emerged.
Anene said why none of the administration’s projects terminated halfway is simply because money earmarked for a particular project is already kept in an account, and released in tranches to contractors as such project progressed.
Anene, who also supervises some of the projects, said Okolo’s administration since inception fixed roads that were in total disrepair before he came in, adding more substations which resulted into interrupted power supply in the institution have been addressed. Also, water challenges, rehabilitation of all the hostels, increase in students’ lecture theatre, fixed interactive white boards in all classrooms/lecture theaters were some of his legacies.
“We are building a new School of Post Graduate which is over 60 per cent completed. It will complement the one we already have. That is why the new structure is close to the old one.
“The number of our staff sent abroad for conferences have increased; this has not been witnessed in the university’s history. It might also interest you to know that since Prof Okolo came, came, he has cleared all certificates backlog as far back as 1981. There was even a point he broke down while signing certificates. Aside, there is no classroom or laboratory where you will not find an interactive white board.
He believes the university is not for lecturers alone, but that both staff and students must be made comfortable to give their best.”
The Dean of Vetenary Medicine Prof Soyinka Olumuyiwa Sodehinde had this to say of Okolo: “There is no way the history of the UNN can be written without Prof Okolo. It’s a pity that some who were peddling rumours were not here five year ago to see the sorry state of this university which was to me, like a war museum. Forty years after the (civil) war, this university was still using prefabricated building made of planks as classrooms and laboratories, it was Okolo that changed all that.
“When (former) president Obasanjo visited this university for our convocation two years ago, he said the entire institution looked like a construction site. He then lauded Okolo for not only developing physical infrastructure but also human materials.
“Before he came on board, there was no bookshop in the university’s history. But now, we have a very big one. It might also interest you to know that our books are a lot cheaper because we signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with publishers so the issue of middlemen was completely ruled out. We also have the university press now. Before, we were spending millions of naira on contracting university materials out; with our press, we now do it internally, thus saving usmillions. The press also generates more money for the university because it prints for outsiders.”
