By Wole Balogun
SA Media to VC
“It is high Nigerian Universities return to the glorious days when the nation’s lvory Towers use to contribute immensely to national development through cutting edge researches as the government and relevant stakeholders provided enabling environment for a thriving gown and town collaboration in this direction.“
The foregoing assertion sums up the advocacy passionately made by the Vice-chancellors of the Federal University of Technology Akure, (FUTA), Prof. Adenike Temidayo Oladiji, and Federal University Oye-Ekiti, (FUOYE), Prof. Abayomi Sunday Fasina, at the FUOYE’s Founder’s Day anniversary held on Thursday, February 8, 2023 at the University’s New Faculty of Science Auditorium (NFSA).
The Founder’s Day anniversary was part of FUOYE’s 8th Convocation ceremony and it featured mainly a lecture by Prof. Oladiji which was titled: “ That Our Universities May Remain Relevant for National Development”.
Prof. Oladiji, whose intimidating academic profile excited the teeming students at the occasion, did justice to the topic as she took the audience through a thought-provoking, insightful, motivating and inspiring lecture on the dire need for Nigerian universities to remain strongly relevant to national growth and development.
She began on a note of establishing the fact that the nation’s national development is a function of the performance of her universities as university education : “… is the life-blood of any nation or its economy”.
She stated that the topic of her lecture is actually admonishing that: “Our national planners would continue to look in the direction of universities for ideas, opinions and innovations and research breakthroughs for national socio-economic transformation.”
Prof. Oladiji, who is a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of science, noted that what makes a University attain global recognition is the impact it makes on the development of its immediate environment. She cited the ten currently most ranked universities in the world which included University of Oxford, Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Cambridge, University of Chicago, lmperial University, London, Tshingua University, Beijing, China, ETH, Zurich, Princeton University and University college, London, and noted that they were so ranked because of the huge impact they made on the economic development of their countries as a result of a function of the intensity and quality of their research outputs.
Coming back to Nigeria, the FUTA Chief Executive went down memory lane to the glorious days of university education in Nigeria, particularly regarding the impact of research breakthroughs in 1960s and early 1980s, and noted that the progress made then had decimated due to certain factors.
She cited the National Universities Commission (NUC) as identifying the factors as: ”lack of research skills in modern methods, constraint of equipment for carrying state-of-the-art research, over-loaded teaching and administrative schedules which leave no time for research, disconnect of research from economy, state and community, difficulty in assessing research funds and diminishing scope of mentoring junior researchers.“
To get rid of the aforementioned factors, she challenged Nigerian University Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and their various teams to adhere to practices that make University administration thick. She identified such practices as commitment to excellence, authority of ideas and commitment to the truth.
Urging University administrators to ensure strict adherence to the practice of the three attributes in Nigerian universities, she identified challenges of ethnicity and religion as playing roles inimical to the growth and development of Nigerian universities. She noted that earlier in the 1960s and early 1980s, Nigerian universities practiced liberality in appointing principal and other officers and that made the system to work.
According to her, the reverse is the case today. she therefore warned against religious and ethnicity sentiments in appointing officers of the universities.
Advicating for liberality in the system, she said: “Do we still have such liberality today? State Universities are even the most guilty. In the 21st Century Nigeria, it is unthinkable for a Yoruba man to be appointed a Vice-Chancellor for a state University in Bauchi or Edo Stqte or an Hausa man to be appointed as Vice-Chancellor of a University established in Ogun or lmo State. Such clannishness cannot promote liberal pursuit of truth which is supposed to be the bedrock of universities.”
Prof. Oladiji further advocated for a situation where competence and true traits of leadership as against popularity would be considered in electing leaders of the nation’s universities.
Her words: “Leadership is basically about a leader influencing or motivating some people towards a vision or some goals…for our universities to remain relevant, the system must shed the toga of clannishness and be led by people of vision, the collective vision. Since universities cannot be relevant without being research-active and producing high quality research outputs, our universities must be led by liberal academics who are deeply committed to research.”
Prof. Oladiji also identified other challenges facing the Nigerian University system and hampering its growth and relevance to national development. Such challenges according to her include funding, manpower, frequent industrial strikes, massification of university education and the aligning research with development.
By massification of University education she meant the mass enrollment of students into the universities without consideration for their competence for such. She therefore advised that only the brightest brains who could fit well into the University education should be admitted while those equally fit for the polytechnic and other vocational educational institutions should be encouraged to be there.
She advised further that productivity from graduates as against their qualifications should be prioritized by employers so as to discourage the massification of University education.
Speaking on the challenge of aligning research with development, Prof. Oladiji encouraged Nigerian University managers to ensure that they align their research organs with industries within their communities so that they could meaningfully contribute to the economic growth of such communities and the the national growth of the nation at large.
The FUTA VC attributed other failures of the Nigerian universities from contributing to national development to poor remuneration and wages, noting that $420 salary for professors remain the poorest remuneration globally and must be reviewed upwardly by government urgently. She however appreciated President Tinubu’s efforts in increasing funding for education in the 2024 budget.
She hammered on the need for Nigerian universities to focus their research on societal needs through strong and adequate gown and town relationship.
Corroborating Prof. Oladiji’s submission, Prof. Fasina said FUOYE under his leadership was already toeing the path of making the University relevant to national development by having presence in not less than nine communities in Ekiti State with programmes such as the Part Time studies, sandwich, and Staff a school and the FUOYE Business school among others.
He noted that while the green revolution of the University has provided farm produce for the state government and for some communities to purchase, the FUOYE water has been servicing some communities while plans are on going to bring on more community services to Ekiti State.
Prof. Fasina said: “ As our erudite Professor was lecturing us , l was thinking about what more can we do for Ekiti state as a University. I am challenged by what our academic staff and students in the exhibition by faculties , especially in engineering faculty, are doing and we will see how we can fund these outstanding research efforts such as the solar seed planter, the electric car and doors and other machines and products already made by them for the benefit of our surrounding communities.
“She also noted that an average Nigerian Professor earns less than &420 and that is quite appalling for the system.
Also, as she noted that losing four years to ASUU strike between 1981 to 2013 was a colossal loss for the Nigerian University system. Such tragic incidents have led to the now palpable yahoo yahoo menace among our youths and the loss of passion for University education.
“In FUOYE, we are making impact in aligning research with development. Already we have Incubation Centres, places where innovation and training thrive. We know that collaborations with industries, is a major challenge to our growth and we will ensure that. Such collaborations can lead to productions that will help us to export and provide jobs for our teeming youths.
We need to be sensitive to our environment and not static. We must influence our immediate environment and the only way to do it is to think outside the box and think constantly , collaborating and synergies with organizations,“ he advised.
Adding colour to the occasion was the presentation of gifts to Prof. Oladiji by both the FUTA alumni association chapter of FUOYE led by Prof. Cecelia Akintayo and the FUOYE Advancement Centre led by Prof. Olubukola Oyawoye, the Director.
