How I tackled cultists – Ekiti VC
Vice Chancellor of Ekiti State University, Professor Patrick Aina, in this interview speaks on the problems confronting the education sector and how he tackled cultism. You became VC five years ago; tell us about the goals you set for yourself. We didn’t have any strategic plan but early last year, we mobilized some people to […]
Vice Chancellor of Ekiti State University, Professor Patrick Aina, in this interview speaks on the problems confronting the education sector and how he tackled cultism.
You became VC five years ago; tell us about the goals you set for yourself.
We didn’t have any strategic plan but early last year, we mobilized some people to help draw a five-year strategic plan which will guide us on where this university would have to be in the next five years and the pathway to achieving that. I think it’s a major achievement for me. I also believe in capacity building. One thing that affected us in the university here, which I discovered early, is limited exposure of our staff, especially academic staff. I thank God that I was able to attract enough support from TETfund for learned conferences and for training of our junior academic staff abroad because I don’t like inbreeding. Today, we have over 35 of them being trained abroad. We were able to attract funds for learned conferences too even taking staff to Ghana. Recently, we took about 50 non-academic staff and over 35 academic staff to Ghana for training. This has brought a lot of positive changes in the people and it has reflected in their productivity.
Your students reportedly participated in the recent elections
The students normally would be attracted into politics because politicians would want to patronize them. I have a good student union executive, they respect me and we meet frequently and I would warn them that they should stay out of politics as much as possible. I would tell them that they can even go to full politics after graduation. I think some of them heeded that but you know students would always be students. But one thing that is good is that they see the vice chancellor as their role model. I don’t even want to be called vice chancellor because they call me Baba (father) and I play that role which I think is important, I even identified cultists. I would call them here and counsel them, and many of them have changed. I think it’s very important if they know that their vice chancellor is not into politics and they see him as a role model and as their father.
In the case of cultism, I met a situation that was much tensed. You would recollect that there was an incidence in 2012 where the cult members struck. Before they struck, one of them was knocked down by a car. I was woken up around midnight. The incident happened outside the campus. We had to arrange to take the student to the hospital. When we discovered that the condition was deteriorating, I said they should take him to Ikere for better treatment because he had head injury. When we saw that the situation was not improving, we were to take him to Ibadan but he could not make it to Ibadan, he died on the way. When I heard that the boy died, I wanted to pre-empt the actions of the cult members, so I had to go to where they were living. A lot of staff said I would never go, but I said No, I have to go. I remember two vehicles drove after me, full of staff because they didn’t want to leave me alone. My jeep couldn’t get to that spot; I had to walk about 50 meters to get to them. Before I got there they were gathering already, apparently somebody had informed them that the VC was coming to attack them. I saw a lot of ammunition. I asked one of them ‘what are you going to do with these? He said ‘ Baba they told us that you are coming to attack us. Then I asked him, will your father attack you and he said no. I said I am your father and not only your VC. Somebody said ‘let’s apologize to him’. And the men started prostrating, the girls were kneeling down. I said ‘God you have taken over’. So I explained to them how we took care of their friend, I never told them he died already. They thanked me; some of them came to me in the morning because they said they didn’t have money to buy drugs. Even when I was going back to my vehicle, they led me there with songs. I thought that was all. I came back to the office, I left around 3.00p.m. for my house and around 4.00p.m. I learnt there was a riot. I called the police; they said they couldn’t enter the campus. That was the last we heard of them. I think God wanted me to know where they were living.
What is your take on private universities?
In the private university, the future may be bright if only they would be attracting students on academics not school fees. I don’t want people to say that they are over charging. You can imagine a medical student paying N1.5 million, I don’t think that is over charging.
That is the problem. They know that the future may not be bright because the students may not be able to afford it. I know some private universities that keep on reducing school fees because they cannot attract enough students and such universities would not be able to attract quality teachers. So, it’s going to affect the quality of their output and that would mar their prospects in future. It is likely that they would not be able to attract enough students that would be able to afford the kind of education they should be offering.
What is your view on whether or not TETfund should be extended to private universities?
I don’t believe they should extend TETfund to private universities. If you want to establish a private business, you should be ready with the responsibilities. TETfund is meant for public institutions, I think it’s going to be a natural attrition eventually, some would fall by the wayside and then eventually we would have a manageable number that we’d be able to sustain.
Do you support the introduction of post UTME screening?
When I was in OAU (Obafemi Awolowo University), we had a small research which compared the performance of our undergraduates with the scores in JAMB and we found out that many of them would check out, they would not complete that programme. That means there was something wrong with JAMB. And that informed a number of universities starting pre-degree courses before this post UTME. That was how we started pre- degree in Ife and we found out that students going through pre-degree excelled better than the ones through JAMB.
How did you improve the university’s sources of finance?
We have very serious financial predicament in EKSU. Our salary bill now is about N400m every month. The subvention we get from government is N260m, which means we have to come out with about N150m every month to pay salary to add to the government’s subventions. We still need about another N100m or thereabout for general maintenance.
We try as much as possible to diversify sources of IGR apart from school fees because we notice that even the school fees were slashed lately. But we try to have other sources of internally generated revenue like EKSU Ventures. Recently, we had block making industry, we are trying to start water factory. We also have consultancy unit that would go to look for consultancy services for the university because we have the personnel. We also have what we call advancement office that will go around raising funds for us. This is a collection of well-meaning Ekiti people that are public spirited. We also make it mandatory for faculties now that they have to generate money. In Faculty of Agriculture, I don’t see the reason why they cannot produce enough food even for feeding the people in Ado Ekiti apart from our community here and they are trying to do that now. I know the university is making soap because they are doing research and even improved the quality. Then we are encouraging our academic staff to be able to do impactful research that could generate money. In some universities, 35 per cent of the budget would come from research.