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‘There must be autonomy in the university system’
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ILOCHI OKAFOR
With his days numbered as the Vice Chancellor of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, ILOCHI OKAFOR says there is no arguing the issue of autonomy for Nigerian universities. Speaking to NNENNA CHUKWU in Awka, he distinguishes between accountability and autonomy, saying the Federal government has a right to know how the subventions disbursed to the universities are spent. But universities must have academic autonomy to admit candidates and lecturers the freedom to teach what they know without undue interference from anybody
With the clock ticking to the end of your tenure as the vice chancellor, what would you consider your major achievement?
It’s usually not easy talking about it without seemingly castigating what you inherited. But I can tell you that I am proud of the co-operation of staff and students whereby we made tremendous progress not only in infrastructural development but also in ensuring the integrity of academic success, elimination of cultism, admission racketeering, ‘sorting’ by students, sexual harassment, regularisation of academic calendar, movement from temporary site to the permanent site within three years of this administration, regular payment of salaries before the 26th of every month whether we got subsidy from the federal government or not, the attraction of the private sector to partner with us in the development of the university, and the establishment of linkages with international organisations and institutions. Those are what I would the major achievements of this administration.
The university has witnessed infrastructural revolution. Bearing in mind the bottlenecks in releasing funds to federal universities for capital projects, how were you able to raise money to accomplish all that you did?
We categorised our project development into two. The so-called abandoned projects, that is, projects that had been started previously hoping that the government was going to finance them but were abandoned because of lack of funds. But with the coming of the civilian administration, funds were now released. So what we did was that we targeted those funds for the federal government capital subventions. But the projects that had not been started at all but were needed for infrastructural development, especially establishment of classrooms, laboratories, lecture halls, staff offices were financed from our internally generated revenue and therefore there was no bottleneck. How did I raise this money? After meeting with the students and parents we decided that we should introduce development levy and I did promise I was going to use the funds collectedjudiciously and I believe I have done that. All the projects we started we did in consultation with the student’s body. So, the students had a role to play in their development. That innovation today has become more or less common place in the university system. Virtually every university now has a development levy that is contributed by the students. But we were the first to start it and I am glad that it has really carried us very far and you have to count it as a major factor in our university getting away from its “glorified secondary school” status to as you now said one of the best in the country. Our hope is that in the next five years we are not just going to be one of the best in this country but one of the best in Africa.
You listed elimination of cultism and exam malpractice as one of your achievements. What method did you adopt to achieve that?
If you want to fight cultism, the first thing is to determine who the genuine students are. You find that those cultists are not genuine students of the university and do not have interest in the academic programmes of the university. Here we digitalised the admission process and the students’ enrolment. So, we now know with a press of the button who is our student and who is not. Secondly, by tightening the admission process, ensuring that admission is based on merit, particularly with the introduction of the post-UME, we are able to admit candidates who are really interested in academic career and not those who come here to become miscreants. Thirdly, by keeping them busy all the time with academic schedule, quizzes, assignments, and at the same time creating avenues for physical and sports recreation. Above all, we instituted what we call the anti-secret cult squad made up of personnel from the army, police, and the paramilitary, who are students of the university. They are very close to the students so they know who the cultists are. By giving them all the logistics support they need, we were able to infiltrate the cult groups. Finally, you must ensure that you monitor closely the academic performance of students. Any student who fails to meet the required standard and ought to go on probation or expulsion immediately that is done. You must appreciate that most extreme cultists do not by any way pay attention to their studies and they end up getting other students to impersonate for them in the exams. Again, by invigilating exams strictly, and am always taking part in the invigilation of exams, cutting down on examination misconduct, you eliminate the chance of all these cultists continuing in the school. So, that helped to put them in check.
Being from the law family, how would you rate your faculties of Law and Medicine and how have you fared in other faculties in terms of accreditation of courses?
The Faculty of Medicine now has full accreditation; they scored about 93 percent in the last accreditation exercise. The Faculty of Law, which also has full accreditation, scored about 83 percent and these are very high scores. So, I can say with all modesty that our law and medical programmes are very good and you know that we have a linkage programme abroad whereby every year at least 20 of our final year students go for their clinical programme to the New York Methodist Hospital which is an affiliate of Cornel University. They spend three months going through what is truly the job of a house officer. They have done very well, the testimonies speak for themselves.
Right now we have about 71 programmes in the university that are fully accredited except one that has interim accreditation. Of the 19 new programmes that we’ve just started, the NUC has completed its first visitation exercise and we were given the go ahead and that is in pharmaceutical sciences, basic medical sciences, the reorganisation of the faculties of engineering and education. So, all our programmes today are legitimate.
You have attracted corporate bodies and individuals who invested millions of naira in the university. This is uncommon even among older universities in the country. What is the secret?
I want to say that my experience in the private sector, as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria who has been in practice and had to deal with people in the private sector. So, it was not difficult connecting with them. Secondly, the Nigerian’s hunger for people who are transparent and honest, there are philanthropists and companies that want to give their money to people who will use it judiciously. So, it is having been in the private world and the trust of judicious application of what they bring. I must use this opportunity to profusely thank our donors. The course of corporate social responsibility is growing among the private sector and I enjoin all my colleagues to ensure that this is reciprocated and the best way to reciprocate is always to make judicious use of endowments given to us.
The street lights on the campus are powered by solar energy. How did you come about that and how much are you spending to maintain the system?
Power supply is one of our most intractable problems. We are in a system that services the built up areas in Awka, Arroma Junction, Ifite, Amansea, Ebenebe, Mgbakwu, so the rationing system invariably leaves us with less than four or five hours of electricity a day. As a result, we have had to rely mostly on generating sets. If you take a walk round the university, my administration has provided a generating set for every faculty and in some cases some very crucial departments with the result that we have about 25 functioning generating sets. Our new library has three back up 500 KV generating sets. Every week, we spend about N900, 000 on diesel and about N200, 000 on ordinary fuel. And that is a lot of money, meaning that virtually every year we spend N52 million on power supply. That called for an alternative system and the most reliable and cheapest alternative is of course solar energy. So, we have started in a small way. We felt that the best place to start was the street light because we want our students to be confident enough to move about at night. The long term plan is to have solar energy replacing the electricity supply. And let me use this opportunity to plead with PHCN over the situation the university finds itself. A university that most of the time carries on teaching and research, without electricity what are we expected to achieve? It is time for us to have our own sub-station.
What is the driving force behind the work aid programme?
Our hero, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, when he founded the University of Nigeria, had introduced what was called the work aid programme. It was designed to enable indigent but bright students to complete their university education. Let me state that university education is a luxury. Not a luxury in terms of wealth, a luxury in terms of intellectual capability. That is to say that not every student who has passed through a secondary school or technical school is expected to end up in the university. But every bright student must be allowed to enter the university and complete it. The state as an obligation should ensure that a bright student ends up with university education. And that is the reason you must have a programme whereby students who are bright but cannot afford university education must be given the necessary enablement for them to complete their education. I came from a very modest home. I completed my law education and even my postgraduate education on scholarships not from the funds provided by my parents. I feel happy that I get testimonies, oral and written, from students who have benefited from the work aid programme. Presently, they work four hours a week and we pay them N5, 000 a month that is N60, 000 a year. And when the school fee is about N20, 000 that means we give them an extra N40, 000 to take care of themselves. We encourage them to stay in the university hostel that also reduces the cost. Then to stay on to the programme you must maintain at least a good academic standard of 2.5 cumulative Grade Point Average.
What will Prof. Ilochi Okafor consider his greatest challenge during these five years and what kind of life would he be living after leaving office?
Being myself, eschewing corruption, fighting against sectionalism, religious politics, insincerity, and lackadaisical attitude to work.
After leaving office leaving office, I would lead a very simple family life. You hardly see me outside, hotels or wherever. Being with my wife, I cannot say my children because they are all grown ups but my grandchildren. They give me so much joy.
You’ve been in the university system for a long time and tested all the cadres, what do you think is the major problem of the university system and the way forward?
The university system has been starved of funds. It is an unfair system to have a lecturer so poorly paid, even less than the graduate he produced. At a time, a lecturer had a take home pay of less than N40, 000 but the student he produced, who got a job in a bank started with a take home pay of about N120, 000. I think the Obasanjo administration did quite a lot increasing the welfare package of the teaching class of university staff but a lot remains to be done. The conditions of service in the university must be made a lot more competitive, if not better than the system in the private sector. That way you attract the best minds. But you find that when there is poor funding and university staff are poorly paid, universities can only attract mediocre, and average brains. People in upper division and first class are absorbed by the private sector. In our own days, the bright chaps went to the university and average chap went to the private sector. So we really need to increase the conditions of service of our university staff in order to attract the bright brains.
Despite claims across the country of the wonderful performances of Nigerian universities, does it not bother you that no Nigerian university is of any ranking in Africa?
Don’t our students go abroad todo their postgraduate and do well? My son finished with a second class upper from the Faculty of Law, UNIZIK and went to University College, London and got his Masters. He is not alone, there are many of our students spread all over Nigerian universities who have gone abroad or who are abroad and they are competing fairly with the rest of the students from the world. I don’t want us to be too panicky about rating. Of course, I would love to see us rated but let us understand the mechanisms of rating. First and foremost, those who rate you don’t visit you physically. They rate you from the information they gather from the website and as our universities continue to improve on the ICT facility, upload the website, publish more about their activities and programmes, you are going to see our rating vastly improve.
How has the university autonomy helped Nigerian universities?
There must be autonomy in the university system, no gain saying about that. But again let us distinguish between autonomy and accountability. He who gives you money to spend deserves the right to call for accountability from you to know how you spent his money. So, to that extent, we support the executive that when they are giving out subventions, they are also putting in place due process to make sure that we use this money judiciously. Academic freedom as the name implies, is restricted to academic matters. Universities must have academic autonomy that is to say state governors should not, during the admission process, send a list of 500 names to the vice chancellor of the state university to admit and if he does not admit them he is removed from office or he is starved of funds. The lecturers should be given the freedom to teach what he knows, how best he knows it, to mark his scripts without any undue interference from anybody. And once that is done, he is given the freedom to engage in his research, the university system will thrive which is exactly what is needed now.
Where there decisions you took that when you look back you feel it should have been the other way round?
People make mistakes but the most important thing is that when you take a decision or when you are about to take a decision, don’t run away from it for fear that you will make a mistake. To tell you the truth, I have never run away from taking any decision once my conscience is clear and I will go home, get on the bed and sleep very well. And I want people to know that these decisions are taken not for personal interest, but the job has to be done. I have very close relatives that were asked to withdraw from the university because they did not meet the academic requirement and they didn’t come in the right way. I have no regrets, the law must be applied.
It’s usually not easy talking about it without seemingly castigating what you inherited. But I can tell you that I am proud of the co-operation of staff and students whereby we made tremendous progress not only in infrastructural development but also in ensuring the integrity of academic success, elimination of cultism, admission racketeering, ‘sorting’ by students, sexual harassment, regularisation of academic calendar, movement from temporary site to the permanent site within three years of this administration, regular payment of salaries before the 26th of every month whether we got subsidy from the federal government or not, the attraction of the private sector to partner with us in the development of the university, and the establishment of linkages with international organisations and institutions. Those are what I would the major achievements of this administration.
The university has witnessed infrastructural revolution. Bearing in mind the bottlenecks in releasing funds to federal universities for capital projects, how were you able to raise money to accomplish all that you did?
We categorised our project development into two. The so-called abandoned projects, that is, projects that had been started previously hoping that the government was going to finance them but were abandoned because of lack of funds. But with the coming of the civilian administration, funds were now released. So what we did was that we targeted those funds for the federal government capital subventions. But the projects that had not been started at all but were needed for infrastructural development, especially establishment of classrooms, laboratories, lecture halls, staff offices were financed from our internally generated revenue and therefore there was no bottleneck. How did I raise this money? After meeting with the students and parents we decided that we should introduce development levy and I did promise I was going to use the funds collectedjudiciously and I believe I have done that. All the projects we started we did in consultation with the student’s body. So, the students had a role to play in their development. That innovation today has become more or less common place in the university system. Virtually every university now has a development levy that is contributed by the students. But we were the first to start it and I am glad that it has really carried us very far and you have to count it as a major factor in our university getting away from its “glorified secondary school” status to as you now said one of the best in the country. Our hope is that in the next five years we are not just going to be one of the best in this country but one of the best in Africa.
You listed elimination of cultism and exam malpractice as one of your achievements. What method did you adopt to achieve that?
If you want to fight cultism, the first thing is to determine who the genuine students are. You find that those cultists are not genuine students of the university and do not have interest in the academic programmes of the university. Here we digitalised the admission process and the students’ enrolment. So, we now know with a press of the button who is our student and who is not. Secondly, by tightening the admission process, ensuring that admission is based on merit, particularly with the introduction of the post-UME, we are able to admit candidates who are really interested in academic career and not those who come here to become miscreants. Thirdly, by keeping them busy all the time with academic schedule, quizzes, assignments, and at the same time creating avenues for physical and sports recreation. Above all, we instituted what we call the anti-secret cult squad made up of personnel from the army, police, and the paramilitary, who are students of the university. They are very close to the students so they know who the cultists are. By giving them all the logistics support they need, we were able to infiltrate the cult groups. Finally, you must ensure that you monitor closely the academic performance of students. Any student who fails to meet the required standard and ought to go on probation or expulsion immediately that is done. You must appreciate that most extreme cultists do not by any way pay attention to their studies and they end up getting other students to impersonate for them in the exams. Again, by invigilating exams strictly, and am always taking part in the invigilation of exams, cutting down on examination misconduct, you eliminate the chance of all these cultists continuing in the school. So, that helped to put them in check.
Being from the law family, how would you rate your faculties of Law and Medicine and how have you fared in other faculties in terms of accreditation of courses?
The Faculty of Medicine now has full accreditation; they scored about 93 percent in the last accreditation exercise. The Faculty of Law, which also has full accreditation, scored about 83 percent and these are very high scores. So, I can say with all modesty that our law and medical programmes are very good and you know that we have a linkage programme abroad whereby every year at least 20 of our final year students go for their clinical programme to the New York Methodist Hospital which is an affiliate of Cornel University. They spend three months going through what is truly the job of a house officer. They have done very well, the testimonies speak for themselves.
Right now we have about 71 programmes in the university that are fully accredited except one that has interim accreditation. Of the 19 new programmes that we’ve just started, the NUC has completed its first visitation exercise and we were given the go ahead and that is in pharmaceutical sciences, basic medical sciences, the reorganisation of the faculties of engineering and education. So, all our programmes today are legitimate.
You have attracted corporate bodies and individuals who invested millions of naira in the university. This is uncommon even among older universities in the country. What is the secret?
I want to say that my experience in the private sector, as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria who has been in practice and had to deal with people in the private sector. So, it was not difficult connecting with them. Secondly, the Nigerian’s hunger for people who are transparent and honest, there are philanthropists and companies that want to give their money to people who will use it judiciously. So, it is having been in the private world and the trust of judicious application of what they bring. I must use this opportunity to profusely thank our donors. The course of corporate social responsibility is growing among the private sector and I enjoin all my colleagues to ensure that this is reciprocated and the best way to reciprocate is always to make judicious use of endowments given to us.
The street lights on the campus are powered by solar energy. How did you come about that and how much are you spending to maintain the system?
Power supply is one of our most intractable problems. We are in a system that services the built up areas in Awka, Arroma Junction, Ifite, Amansea, Ebenebe, Mgbakwu, so the rationing system invariably leaves us with less than four or five hours of electricity a day. As a result, we have had to rely mostly on generating sets. If you take a walk round the university, my administration has provided a generating set for every faculty and in some cases some very crucial departments with the result that we have about 25 functioning generating sets. Our new library has three back up 500 KV generating sets. Every week, we spend about N900, 000 on diesel and about N200, 000 on ordinary fuel. And that is a lot of money, meaning that virtually every year we spend N52 million on power supply. That called for an alternative system and the most reliable and cheapest alternative is of course solar energy. So, we have started in a small way. We felt that the best place to start was the street light because we want our students to be confident enough to move about at night. The long term plan is to have solar energy replacing the electricity supply. And let me use this opportunity to plead with PHCN over the situation the university finds itself. A university that most of the time carries on teaching and research, without electricity what are we expected to achieve? It is time for us to have our own sub-station.
What is the driving force behind the work aid programme?
Our hero, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, when he founded the University of Nigeria, had introduced what was called the work aid programme. It was designed to enable indigent but bright students to complete their university education. Let me state that university education is a luxury. Not a luxury in terms of wealth, a luxury in terms of intellectual capability. That is to say that not every student who has passed through a secondary school or technical school is expected to end up in the university. But every bright student must be allowed to enter the university and complete it. The state as an obligation should ensure that a bright student ends up with university education. And that is the reason you must have a programme whereby students who are bright but cannot afford university education must be given the necessary enablement for them to complete their education. I came from a very modest home. I completed my law education and even my postgraduate education on scholarships not from the funds provided by my parents. I feel happy that I get testimonies, oral and written, from students who have benefited from the work aid programme. Presently, they work four hours a week and we pay them N5, 000 a month that is N60, 000 a year. And when the school fee is about N20, 000 that means we give them an extra N40, 000 to take care of themselves. We encourage them to stay in the university hostel that also reduces the cost. Then to stay on to the programme you must maintain at least a good academic standard of 2.5 cumulative Grade Point Average.
What will Prof. Ilochi Okafor consider his greatest challenge during these five years and what kind of life would he be living after leaving office?
Being myself, eschewing corruption, fighting against sectionalism, religious politics, insincerity, and lackadaisical attitude to work.
After leaving office leaving office, I would lead a very simple family life. You hardly see me outside, hotels or wherever. Being with my wife, I cannot say my children because they are all grown ups but my grandchildren. They give me so much joy.
You’ve been in the university system for a long time and tested all the cadres, what do you think is the major problem of the university system and the way forward?
The university system has been starved of funds. It is an unfair system to have a lecturer so poorly paid, even less than the graduate he produced. At a time, a lecturer had a take home pay of less than N40, 000 but the student he produced, who got a job in a bank started with a take home pay of about N120, 000. I think the Obasanjo administration did quite a lot increasing the welfare package of the teaching class of university staff but a lot remains to be done. The conditions of service in the university must be made a lot more competitive, if not better than the system in the private sector. That way you attract the best minds. But you find that when there is poor funding and university staff are poorly paid, universities can only attract mediocre, and average brains. People in upper division and first class are absorbed by the private sector. In our own days, the bright chaps went to the university and average chap went to the private sector. So we really need to increase the conditions of service of our university staff in order to attract the bright brains.
Despite claims across the country of the wonderful performances of Nigerian universities, does it not bother you that no Nigerian university is of any ranking in Africa?
Don’t our students go abroad todo their postgraduate and do well? My son finished with a second class upper from the Faculty of Law, UNIZIK and went to University College, London and got his Masters. He is not alone, there are many of our students spread all over Nigerian universities who have gone abroad or who are abroad and they are competing fairly with the rest of the students from the world. I don’t want us to be too panicky about rating. Of course, I would love to see us rated but let us understand the mechanisms of rating. First and foremost, those who rate you don’t visit you physically. They rate you from the information they gather from the website and as our universities continue to improve on the ICT facility, upload the website, publish more about their activities and programmes, you are going to see our rating vastly improve.
How has the university autonomy helped Nigerian universities?
There must be autonomy in the university system, no gain saying about that. But again let us distinguish between autonomy and accountability. He who gives you money to spend deserves the right to call for accountability from you to know how you spent his money. So, to that extent, we support the executive that when they are giving out subventions, they are also putting in place due process to make sure that we use this money judiciously. Academic freedom as the name implies, is restricted to academic matters. Universities must have academic autonomy that is to say state governors should not, during the admission process, send a list of 500 names to the vice chancellor of the state university to admit and if he does not admit them he is removed from office or he is starved of funds. The lecturers should be given the freedom to teach what he knows, how best he knows it, to mark his scripts without any undue interference from anybody. And once that is done, he is given the freedom to engage in his research, the university system will thrive which is exactly what is needed now.
Where there decisions you took that when you look back you feel it should have been the other way round?
People make mistakes but the most important thing is that when you take a decision or when you are about to take a decision, don’t run away from it for fear that you will make a mistake. To tell you the truth, I have never run away from taking any decision once my conscience is clear and I will go home, get on the bed and sleep very well. And I want people to know that these decisions are taken not for personal interest, but the job has to be done. I have very close relatives that were asked to withdraw from the university because they did not meet the academic requirement and they didn’t come in the right way. I have no regrets, the law must be applied.
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