By Victor C. Ariole

Twenty years are gone since Professor Jelili Adebisi Omotola, SAN, the seventh Vice Chancellor of University of Lagos bid farewell to the planet earth, and his planet earth’s traces are still printed on the sands of time. “OmoT”, as he was fondly called by his admirers, had also his foes in UNILAG known as the “Ogoni 9”.

His Balance Sheet, in all, weighed positively on the Assets side and generated great surplus that kept him as a “Capital” with great reserve, and that “Reserve” is what the Dean of Law, Professor Abiola Sanni, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Folasade Ogunsola, the Pro-Chancellor – the Doyen of Silk Group in Nigeria – Wole Olanipekun, and the children of OmoT are willing to continuously grow and showcase with awards and infrastructure upgrades as International Moot session for law students are staged and winners are greatly rewarded in cash and kind.

Notwithstanding what his foes see as shortcoming in his foray into “Outreach Degree Programme” in South Korea, which, by today’s clamour, could have seen a great generation of IGR (Internally Generated Revenue) for the University he so much loved, it remains a vision yet to be matched by other universities-internationalising Nigerian universities.
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For the Pro-Chancellor, Omo T was “sui generis”, a class of its own and unparalleled. He was his teacher, his mentor and, as well, during silk selection as his teacher, and as he was there before him, a “partie-pris” adjudicator. He was part of the selection team that presented Omo T for SAN. He puts it as: “Awonagbawa won fi toroawonagba”, an outstanding personality that must be rated outstandingly and weighted on his enormous goodwill value. Accordingly, he stood by him in all his moment of joy and travail.
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From 1995-2000, Professor Omotola held sway in UNILAG, taking the bull by the horn. It was also the trying moment of Nigeria; military rule, opposition to military rule, from General Sani Abacha, through General Abdusalami Abubakar to the emergence of civilian government; and mostly when university education was brought to its knees as the military had no time for it. Poverty reigned in Nigerian universities then.
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It was a time university administrators were greatly challenged, and to the surprise of many University of Lagos seemed isolated with teaching materials, air conditioners, fridges, televisions, etc coming from South Korea, a country that came begging Nigerians and other foreign investors in the eighties to invest just $10,000 in their economy and earn their citizenship. Hence, some Nigerians found themselves as manufacturers and businessmen in South Korea, and what is more, a support group that made the demand for Nigerian university outreach programme quite appetising in South Korea. A strategy carried out by informal engagements that made also informal tactical activities possible; so offering them university education made in Nigeria was like a counterpart funding in kind contribution.
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The law establishing the university frowns at such informal tactical foray, it remains all the same a marginal activity, or even a lesser injurious offence like the injury inflicted on universities by the Military Rule.
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And talking about injury at the “Moot and Mock Trial Session” celebrating Omo T, at the University Auditorium on the 30th April, as a layman it baffled one to hear that when both claimant and defendant are all guilty of committing an injury identifiable by law, especially in conflicting documents of ownership of land, equitable interest could supercede legal interest in the adjudication process. So, Omo T could have been vindicated in his struggle to keep UNILAG alive in the midst of conflicting military and civil society’s interest; that of accepting Military Decrees that have no respect for university education and the de jure legal instrument that established the university to compete universally.
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Once in an ASUU meeting, Omo T appeared. His message: Money is no more coming to the university as it is supposed to come to support research and teaching activities. As the father of this university, I cannot fold my arms and watch poverty take hold of the university. I must go out and see how to bring in money into the university and it is your own duty as lecturers to devise intra-preneurial ability to access the money I intend to bring into the system. Show what you are capable of doing and access fund.
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Today, universities are in multiple cooperatives and are undertaking memoranda of understanding to attract research grants by associating with highly rated universities all over the world as Nigerian universities are yet to feature among the first 100. Imagine a situation where equitable interest as against highly military disdain and officious legalese, conflicting interests, would have made South Korean foray a truly universal venture to keep faith with university vision of being one of the best in the world, hence well rated to access international funds for research.
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A lawyer has no business with poverty like he was wont to say; just like the university has no business with begging for money. Just tell business people that this is what the university needs, infrastructure-wise, tell them the accruable benefit when they install it and it is easier executed than begging for money. So, Omo T’s vision is as today seen in Build-Operate-and-Transfer (BOT).

So, also, it is seen in Public Private Partnership (PPP). With OmoT, Federal Government installed “chateau d’eau” and it entered into UNILAG Water Venture. Engineering projects followed with great hall infrastructure that could seat over 5000 people at a time and accessible by events planners; added as well, a vision to make the lagoon front a great tourist corner – with planted hospitality activities. Furthermore it helped to actualise accessing UNILAG by water, road and air.
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He succeeded a Vice-Chancellor that was known to be highly academic oriented, who left the business side unattended to, and as alleged by his admirers, he needed to prove that a Vice-Chancellor is both academic and a business person, hence his great concern for proving that he was both academically at alert as well as business-wise effective.
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His legacy lives on and it behoves the university to perpetuate it as Professor Sanni, the Dean of Law, is doing.

Ariole is a Professor of French and Francophone Studies, UNILAG.