Federal universities without national character

Early this week, the Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Emeritus Is-haq Oloyede organised an interactive session with senior media executives at NICON Luxury, Abuja. It was during the interactive session that followed his presentation and announcement of datelines for 2025 UTME that he touched off some challenges facing the Nigerian universities at this time.

For instance, in response to a question on some reported irregularities especially in admission of new students and administration of universities in the country today, Professor Oloyede specifically challenged the Nigerian press to deconstruct an incipient plague in the ivory towers: attempts by university administrators to localise Nigerian universities, which should ordinarily have a national character. Oloyede who specifically lamented a situation whereby some intellectuals and university administrators who are supposed to encourage national character in leadership of the tertiary education are encouraging provincialism in their recruitment through the Governing Councils. He urged journalists to ask questions about a situation whereby the first seven senior officers of a federal university should hail from the location of a university that is supposed to entrench universal values.

The former vice chancellor couldn’t understand why those who aspire to lead the University of Ibadan established as a University College since 1948 should be asking for its Vice Chancellor to hail from Ibadan Municipal Local Council. I was there when all these questions on the state of university education cropped up this week. Meanwhile, the former Vice Chancellor of the university of Ilorin who hails from Ogun state would also like the aristocracy of the Nigerian media to do some contextual reporting of illegal admission of students into some so-called professional courses they feel can assist in the ‘japa syndrome’, notably Medicine/Health Sciences and Law.

He revealed that most of the Law graduates of certain universities that have admitted students above the annual quota allowed by regulatory authorities could not proceed to the Law School and compulsory National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) scheme because of only admission letters from the universities instead of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). He noted that in the same vein, most students who have completed medical and health science studies could not be admitted into the medical professions because of irregularities in their admissions, which didn’t emanate from the statutory matriculation Board. He wondered why some even highly placed parents paved the way for illegal admissions of their unqualified wards to study courses they can’t complete, after all. He hinted at absence of political will to prosecute university administrators who have been destroying destinies of our children by bowing to wealthy parents who curiously bribe university officers for admissions. He noted that part of the consequences of the irregular admissions of students is that most of the beneficiaries always drop out because of poor foundations.

For me, the highlight of Oloyede’s lamentation is his call on the authorities to ensure that Nigerian universities restore national character to their administration. That is the foundation of most of the malaise in the university education system that authorities in Abuja and the 36 state capitals aren’t paying attention to at the moment. Undoubtedly, radical restructuring of university education leadership challenge (beyond funding) should be part of the directive principles and priorities that the present administration should regard as an urgent national assignment. It is in public interest.

It will be recalled that the wind of convocation time blew me to the Sunshine state, Ondo on Thursday, December 7, 2023 where I delivered the 12th Convocation Lecture of the Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, Ondo State. The Vice Chancellor, Professor Olugbenga E. Ige, led me into temptation of writing 11, 544-word lecture. The lecture titled, “Internationalisation of Universities for Global Relevance”, was quite remarkable for various contexts and contents.

On December 10, 2023, I began serialisation of some of the excerpts of the lecture retitled, “Time To Restore ‘Universe’ To Our Universities”. In some historical excursions, I noted a correlation between federalism and internationalisation of university education and to the extent that both concepts aren’t new, after all. I claimed that we lost federalism we are begging for now specifically in 1966 when the soldiers of fortune struck down democracy and federalism through Decree No.34 and institutionalised the federal republic of the Nigerian army. I had added at the AAUA that it wasn’t however clear when we began to lose the ‘universe’ of the ‘universal city’ also known as the university, although I cited the lamentation of Professor Wole Soyinka more than two decades ago when he curiously called for closures of most of the universities for proper overhaul as the decline we are deconstructing now was evident to the Nobel laureate then. But as I was saying then, “it is clear that the ‘universe’ in the university has been markedly affected by a combination of factors you will find in the lecture.

As I had indicated then, the convocation lecture was not a seminal paper on the role of the university in a developing country. Nor was it a research topic on the role of public intellectuals in development. Rather, it was a thought-provoking discussion point on why all our representatives in government should halt the “hollow rituals” called licensing of new private universities and the federal government’s own obsession with political project called federal universities in all the states of the federation.

Although ASUU appears tired of talking to the deaf in the education sector, the elders of the land should not ignore the warning of Professor Oloyede who just called out some university administrators who are currently gambling with the destiny of the most populous black nation on earth. The authorities overseeing the education sector for President Tinubu should note that education quality is too important to be subjected to the whims and caprices of the retrogressive and provincial cabals who don’t care a hoot about whatever happens to the university system here. I mean the dealers among scholars who call themselves leaders and can do anything to be vice chancellors even when they know that they aren’t qualified.

These scoundrels in the university system are sycophants and stand for nothing. They can admit all the morons who seek admission as long as they are from barons who can put them in office and power in the universities. They just want to be Vice Chancellors, Deputy Vice chancellors, Deans etc. They aren’t honourable. What is worse, the Visitors to the universities are becoming more careless and reckless in their choice of Pro Chancellors who are Chairmen of Governing Councils. Why would authorities appoint anyhow politicians as Pro Chancellors of Universities of Medical Sciences, for instance?

In the lifecycle of this democracy we began some 25 years ago, not many would recall that at a time the late Adamu Ciroma angrily resigned from the Council of a first generation federal university in the North when the bigots and hitmen there rejected a non-native from Niger Delta who had twice come tops through the selection committee of the Governing Council Adamu chaired then. The natives in a federal university insisted on a Muslim and a right candidate from the far North.

Is it possible in today’s Nigeria for non-Yoruba professors to be recommended by selection committees as Vice Chancellors of the Universities of Ibadan, Lagos, Ife, among other federal universities in the southwest region? Can the Governing Council of the first full-fledged university in Nigeria, University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) recommend any world-class professor outside the south-east region as Vice Chancellor? Can anyone outside Edo State stick out his neck to apply to be Vice Chancellor of the University of Benin, a position Professor Adamu Baike from Kano once occupied?

What of the great Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, that had an expatriate as pioneer Vice chancellor? Can the Governing Council of A.B.U, Zaria dare to accept applications from southerners and even Christians from the North who would like to be Vice Chancellor?

Who will borrow a leaf from Nigeria’s premier University of Medical Sciences Governor Olusegun Mimiko, a physician, set up in Ondo in 2014? The pioneer Vice Chancellor was Professor Friday Okonofua, who hails from Edo State. The outgoing (second) Vice Chancellor Professor Adesegun Fatusi hails from Ogun State, thanks to the late Rotimi Akeredolu who like his predecessor, insisted on merit. I understand from health science experts and regulators that the standard of the Ondo State University of Medical Sciences is quite consistently satisfactory. Most parents prefer the university for medical and health science education because they have had two world-class professors who always attract good professors. The Chairman of the Governing Council of the University, Ayodele Olatunji Arowojolu is a retired professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology from the College of Medicine University of Ibadan and University College Hospital (UCH) Ibadan. It is heartening to mention that similar trend is also playing out in Unilorin whose current Vice Chancellor, Professor Wahab Olasupo Egbewole is a native of Ile-Ife in Osun State.

Let’s review this classic that most of us have received many times across platforms, which I also used in Akungba 2023. It is on ‘why collapse of education is the collapse of a nation’. Recall that the following words posted at the entrance gate of a South African university sums up the problems we are now facing:

“Destroying any nation does not require the use of atomic bombs or the use of long-range missiles. It only requires lowering the quality of education and allowing cheating in the examinations by the students”. The result is that: “Patients die at the hands of doctors. Buildings collapse at the hands of engineers. Money is lost at the hands of economists and accountants. Humanity dies at the hands of religious scholars. Justice is lost at the hands of judges. Because “The collapse of education is the collapse of the nation.”

This message is not directed at President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his Minister of Education alone. It is directed at all the 36 state governors and 774 local government council officials in this troubled federation. It is not about typing out the quotable quotes or words on marble on education in our various rooms and offices. It is about how our leaders can manage priorities in a way that will empower them to regard and invest in education as a weapon of country and global competitiveness.

This treatise is about how and when to flush out corrupt professors and fake scholars who are helping perverted parents to admit retarded candidates who couldn’t pass school certificate examination well for university education. It is a time to kick out politicians in the academia who are beginning to buy the majesty of the office of the Vice Chancellor. That isn’t how to preserve the ‘universe’ in the universal city (university).

TO BE CONTINUED…