How we’ll reduce extortion of students -Ekiti varsity VC
What state did you meet the university on assumption of office and what are the challenges you have identified since you come? The university will be 30 years on March 30, this year, and at the age of thirty you have a university that does not have water supply, electricity and ICT development is almost […]
What state did you meet the university on assumption of office and what are the challenges you have identified since you come?
The university will be 30 years on March 30, this year, and at the age of thirty you have a university that does not have water supply, electricity and ICT development is almost nil. How can you talk of academic excellence in an environment like this? These problems are not caused by the people, that is why I commend the academic staff that have been coping with this difficult environment. And these are part of the things we are looking to change, to make it a real university. Presently, EKSU is non residential so after 4 pm, nobody is on campus, these are things I noticed. In order to have a good academic culture, you have to start changing things gradually and it has to be drastic as well, to bring in basic facilities like water, electricity and to change this university to a world class and to a 21st century university standard, then we must have a good ICT structure on ground. Then there must be a residential estate where you have communal living for academic and administrative staff even for the students to have a university culture.
At Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) where I came from, you can work 24 hours a day. You can be at your laboratory till early hours in the morning and go home because there is electricity, there is security and all those things that enhanced community leaving but these things are lacking here now and we want to change that.
Are you saying at thirty years of existence EKSU is yet to have a university culture?
It has a culture but we are talking of a 21st century university culture. It is a kind of holistic approach that we are trying to adopt now to transform the university and it has to be fast.
Last year, there was a stampede at the Faculty of Education where a pregnant lady collapsed because of inadequate lecture rooms, also the issue of delay in releasing results of students three years after examinations have become part of the hallmark of this university, how are you going to tackle these problems?
Certainly, a pregnant woman will need oxygen more than others. I believe we have some good structures on ground, there is one called three in one lecture theatre that can seat about three thousand students; OAU did not have it but EKSU has two of it. But the truth is that, no matter how conducive the lecture hall is, students will still rush, some will prefer to sit in the front row or second. Look at the larger society, if you want to board a plane, you have your seat number already on your ticket, yet they still rush. On the issue of result, I said earlier that the ICT is almost at zero level. If you have good ICT structure, students can register online, the questions and answers can be online and this will expedite the process of grading. That is why I said I gave credit to the academic staff for still going through this kind of manual approach to assessing students, it is not done anywhere. I moved around the campus, there is no where you have a white board, they are still using black boards, and it is like we are still living in the past. Let’s praise these lecturers for working under this strenuous condition of inadequate teaching and non teaching facilities. In the next few months, problems of ICT will be a thing of the past.
What are you doing to the problems confronting the part time programme of the school, four years after writing their final papers no results? Don’t you think the programme needs to be restructured?
On the second week of my assumption as the VC, I held a meeting with all the directors of the part time programmes, affiliate programmes, including the sandwich and I have come to the conclusion that we must restructure these programmes. Letters had been sent out because I have set four high powered committees to look at the structure of these programmes. I have an idea of what they should be; we have to restructure these programmes. We have a large number of students on the part time programmes, I want to ensure all of them are attending lectures any where they are and meet the seventy five per cent condition of attendance. We want to adopt a distance learning module, so that we can handle our large students because we have over 20,000 which is good. There is nothing bad with such a large number but you have to adopt a structure that will ensure quality control. I have talked to the directors to transform their lecture materials, which will be peer reviewed into books, so that we can adopt these books. We may have students that would not be able to attend lectures as required; this programme is meant for working class. Let’s have distant learning module, we shall have our lectures in CDs and hard copies. We will arrange a time for those who will not be able to attend lectures regularly, have one-on-one interaction with them. That is the essence of distance learning and it means we are taking the education to the door step of those who need it, rather than deceiving ourselves that over 20,000 students would be attending lectures regularly. We are going to start this system from this session, these are good programmes but they need quality control.
How will you source funds for all these projects especially the ICT you talked about? Besides, would you say both academic and non academic staff are computer literate to effectively make use of the technology?
I want to give credit to the state governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, he is intellectually gifted, because when you talk to your governor and he understands what you are getting at, it makes things better. He is personally interested in developing this school to a world class university. The work to lay optic fibre to the campus has started; his Special Adviser on Infrastructure is very regular here now. We are linking up with the Multi links very soon, that is a first step which is a fire brigade, which of course, is temporary. We are receiving funding from Guarantee Trust Bank (GTB) for ICT development.
We have approached Google Nigeria; they are to work with us to set up our ICT.
In terms of personnel, we have a centre for ICT here and it is headed by a Professor who is sound in this area. Talking in terms of computer compliance by staff, not all of them have got the skill, but you cannot blame them. Once we have our ICT on ground we will have a programme to train them, even some academic staff need to train on ICT. If not that my discipline also relates to using it, maybe I would not have been able to use computer at the age I started using it. But now with ICT on ground, we will come up with a programme where we can supply them with lap top or desk top computers on loan, a kind of soft loan they can pay without stress on their pockets. We would also have regular training programmes for all our staff because we want to introduce e-administration where everything here will be done electronically. Let me tell you that very soon we are starting a workshop on developing a five-year strategic plan for the university. The document is going to be like a bible that will give us roadmap to attaining greater height for this university.
How do you intend to curb the high level of extortion, many students are complaining about some lecturers forcing them to buy handouts if they want to pass their courses and some excessive administrative charges by the school authority?
The truth is that you cannot eradicate extortion in any campus but we shall stem it down. I have held meetings with the academic staff that they should stop selling handouts to the students and they have all agreed with me. But handouts will now be converted into books. I am encouraging what is called academic publishing where you can have a peer review of your lecture materials and the university will publish it. We have a university press that is under-utilised and the authors will have royalties on the books. I am happy that it didn’t take us much energy to agree on this and I am so glad that they have accepted me. I can assure you that the issue of extorting students is being tackled.
We have restructured the whole payment system, now students would be paying online and then there would be no subsidiary fees either from the faculty or the department, they have to go through the university account where we will determine how much would be needed to run them.
The governor has slashed the school tuition to N50,000. This is what government believed parents could afford, I am not quarrelling with this, even medical students are to be trained with N50,000 per year, but there are some minor fees that we have to charge like the Identity Card (ID) project we are doing where we are adopting biometrics. But we have cancelled any payment to the faculties or departments. All members of staff and students must have ID card, good enough to be used for financial transactions and we can use it to monitor our students with GPS. The biometrics data capturing has started and we have registered over 1000 staff and we shall soon start with the students.
What are your plans to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the school, besides we learnt there had not been convocation ceremony in the last five years?
We have been graduating students but the convocation will come with the anniversary which is a week long event. It will hold by March ending, and a number of activities have been lined up to make it a grand occasion. Some prominent Nigerians will be recognised by giving them honorary awards, and we shall certify four sets of graduates.