It is sad universities recycle rotten, myopic academics – VC

Looking back in the last five years, how has the university fared in discharging its mandate and what is your plan for the future? I thank God for the opportunity to lead the university for five years. Whatever success we had was a collective success of every section, individual and department. We all worked hard […]

Looking back in the last five years, how has the university fared in discharging its mandate and what is your plan for the future?
I thank God for the opportunity to lead the university for five years. Whatever success we had was a collective success of every section, individual and department. We all worked hard together to take the university to its present enviable height. We’ve been able to graduate two sets. Also, we’ve been able to attract a very strong academic body from within and outside the country. We’ve settled down to research work, in terms of teaching, academics, scholarly activities. We have been able to build an academic body that has reflected in the reputation of the university. The excellence of our academic body in the past five years has reflected in the university. We should also know that a mediocre academic will, in turn, mean a mediocre university.  
We’ve been able to put in place strategies for recruiting students. That has actually helped us to attract very good students. We have what we call Open House. We are the only university that does that. In summer, we open our university to secondary school students who are potential students, their parents and teachers. They come here, they meet departments, colleges, listen to activities, to know what course to pursue or not, the implication, how to work hard and so on. This enables them to make up their mind whether to come to KWASU or not.  
In addition, it enables us to attract excellent students that are relevant to our own goals. For instance, we have some courses that other universities do not offer. Like aeronautics, entrepreneurial education. We intend to expand this Open House to enable parents all over the country participate.  
We’ve been able to create relationship with industries because that is really the job of universities. That is, to encourage active participation of industry. We have also found partners all around the world, from Asia, South America, North America, Europe etc to help in terms of delivery of 21st century education. Some of our staffers have gone to Colombia University for a year’s joint collaboration programme. KWASU has also been chosen as headquarter of an international consortium on Mother Tongue education.
 
What have you been doing to impact on the immediate community?
We go to know what is lacking among people in our immediate environment. We discover that poverty is deep rooted. We can see the MDGs that is focusing on poverty alleviation, economic emancipation etc. We work with these millennium development goals and try to bring people out of poverty. In KWASU, it is compulsory for every lecturer to have a community outreach, without which they can’t be promoted. And we give these lecturers money to carry out different programmes which can be used for their activities anywhere in Nigeria, not limited to Kwara State, as long as the project is community oriented, resolving a problem, moving community forward, creating a change in the community etc. We also have our entrepreneurship orientation. This is an entrepreneurial university. I make bold to say that KWASU today is the leading public university in entrepreneurship. We even teach directors all over the world. They come during summer to review curriculum, strategy for delivery, to rub minds and assess where Nigeria is at the moment in entrepreneurship education in higher institution, involving directors of polytechnics, colleges of education. We have become a centre of entrepreneurial education in tertiary education in Nigeria. We’ve also gone beyond that as we’ve introduced entrepreneurial education in such a way that our students are entrepreneurs, whether you do engineering or Islamic Studies. I have said it, that this university will be ready to disown a student if he roams the street after graduation from here because really we’ve empowered them. We’ve created an entrepreneurial fund, which we are now ready to implement to complement and support any person who is our product looking for funding. So we can now give them money since before they leave here, they already have a project as they would have tested it, run it because some of them have businesses created while they were students. Also on entrepreneurship, we started a degree programme in entrepreneurship education. This is to produce teachers for secondary schools. We are the only university in Nigeria doing that.
 
What are your plans for future?
We want to set a solid foundation so that it becomes the norm, coming from a state with poor revenue allocation. So, we can’t depend 100 percent on the government, especially because of our goal in 21st century education which is world class. We must have a strong foundation in terms of funding. We have started KWASU foundation. It’s going to be an independent foundation run by a philanthropist and set of philanthropists as Board of Trustees and Board of Directors with day-to-day fund raising and investment of the fund anywhere in the university. Also, there will be re-investing of the fund in infrastructure and research e.g., grant to lecturers to focus on resolving certain problems of Nigeria or construction of building. It is independent of the university and government. This is because our future must be secured and this is the way we go. We also want to go around the world for fund raising. For example, USA has an opportunity to raise fund for charity. University is recognised as non-profit organisation and a charity in US Law which people can donate to and get tax reducible credit. So, we’ve registered KWASU as a recognised institution in America that can collect tax reducible donations. We also have a Centre for sponsored projects in the university that encourages academic staff of the university to look for grant from all over the world. The centre gets information all round the globe and disseminate same to staff. As part of our future plan, we plan to regenerate and refresh regularly. Most Nigerian universities recycle and this does not leave room for regeneration or renewal. A person that does not go to class regularly becomes head of department next year, later he becomes the dean and eventually the vice-chancellor. How would that university ever change? So, we are planning with the government to advertise our vacant post to the world and allow for competition, from within and outside, in order to get the best for the university and remain World Class University. Almost all universities in the country just recycle rotten, archaic, myopic academic who thinks once they are professors, they don’t need to teach, do research, and only want to be in politics or become directors, vice-chancellor. With this, Nigeria is not developing.
 
Will you say governments, at various levels, have adequately utilised abundant reservoir of knowledge and expertise domiciled in Nigerian universities?
No, they have not. What you see is the way they reduce scholars to politicians. Imagine the appointment of a professor as advisers to a chief of staff. It is demeaning, but it is actually the professors that are looking for the positions. They are already archaic as they do nothing after becoming professor. They’d rather be a councillor with a fleet of cars and buildings, rather than being a true academic. The crisis we have today is because the academic are not true to the profession and government does not see the potentials of the academics. And it’s very sad as both sides have not been fair to Nigeria. The solution to this is that universities should be true universities and create wealth. Teaching people is just a small part of the job of the university. But that’s the focus and that’s why we have many roaming the streets. They are taught and issued with certificate but no use for it because the universities had not concerned themselves to creating wealth by collaborating with industries, with helping government. Universities should be able to study local or state governments, have different ideologies that are relevant to Nigeria or reflect on political challenges in the country and bring out projections. There has to be a synergy, that’s the reality because universities are not in isolation. Many universities of the world have moved since when they are created but we have frozen on the same spot. That is why we’re not competitive and not ranked among world class. It’s sad. University of Ibadan started as World Class University, but that has gone now. Our politicians should look up to university, while universities must go out to help the nation.