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Okebukola - There's Room for Retired But Active Professors(This Day (Nigeria) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission until tomorrow morning, Prof. Peter Okebukola will be remembered for many things - the axing of satellite campuses, unprecedented increase in the number of private universities to 25, enforcement of minimum academic standards and carrying capacities in universities, their ranking, the loss of accreditation by the 'the big names', stabilisation fund, 'bribe-for-budget' scandal and many more. In what can be termed his valedictory interviews, he discussed these and more with newsmen in Abuja and Lagos. In your convocation lecture at the Covenant University, you expressed fears about aging professorship, where professors are retiring much faster than the system is able to replace them. Couldn't the NUC have evolved a programme to re engage retired but not tired professors? Two years ago, I established the 'Retired but Active Professors Scheme'. We have a database of about 300 people in that scheme and we have engaged almost a hundred into universities. You see, if we don't have your data to show that you are interested in being called up for active duty again, we won't consider you. We sent posters on the scheme to our universities about two years ago and put advertisements in the papers. We look at the accreditation results of our universities and then see areas where they were denied accreditation on account of staffing. We go to our database and look for the retired professor in that area that can be engaged. We then write to the university to ask if they can engage the professor and most times, they say 'yes'. That's why we have been able to fix about a hundred. The new universities especially, are getting a lot from that database. What I think should be done now is to put that database online, discipline by discipline and let all Vice Chan cellors know that that resource is available, so they can tap into it and directly contact the individuals. For now, the NUC is like the broker, the intermediary between the universities and the professors. To show how much interest I have in this, between when I got into office and now, I have engaged 10 former Vice Chancellors. I gave preference to those who have served as chairmen, Committee of Vice Chancellors. I've found that scheme to be helpful because I gave each of these former Vice Chancellors projects to run. So it gave me time for several other things. It also served as a bridge between NUC and the universities that we serve. Before bringing in a former Vice Chancellor the project that he will chair was already identified. The current Executive Secretary (Prof. Julius Okojie) was engaged the same way. He was in charge of the (Standing Committee on Private Universities) SCOPU, Best Practices in University Teaching (BESTPUT) and some other small projects that we ha ve. Which one is BESTPUT? I found that we have people like Profs Olu Akinkugbe, Umaru Shehu, Gabriel Ogunmola, etc who have left the system and were great teachers. Many years from now, God sparing their lives, they will pass on. We may not have the kinds of good quality lectures that they delivered again. So we approached this in two stages. I came in in August 2001 and by December I asked that we should do a national study of the topics that university undergraduates find most difficult to learn. So we went to the NYSC orientation camps, to ask the fresh graduates to tell us those courses that they found most difficult to learn and why. More importantly, we ask them which lecturers in their universities or in others that they heard about, that are good in teaching those topics and we found very interesting results. So we listed those difficult topics, identify the lecturers and Okojie was put in charge of going to those lecturers to record their lessons. We have the recordings now. What we intended to do, which funds could not make us do quickly, was to mass produce those CDs and send them to those universities and other so that the lecturers and students who find them difficult can listen to them in their spare time to further learning. The second segment of the BESTPUT was to record the lessons of people like Akinkugbe in Medicine, Engineering, Management, many of them, with a view to mass producing them for the universities. With reference to the last accreditation exercise, it was alleged that some of the universities, especially the older ones, lost the accreditation of some programmes either because NUC, being vindictive, sent people from rival universities to inspect their programmes, or that they were not able to grease the palms of the assessors. Did you get these reports? No we did not, but we can respond to them. The question of gratification could not have arisen. In the past, we used to send Senior Lecturers and Associate professors for accreditation. But we decided, this time, to send only full, experienced Professors, who have seen it all and with their reputation at stake. We accept that kind of allegation with a pinch of salt. Besides, it was not a one-person team. We had three, four, five persons in each team. So would you say that Professors from different universities would collude to extort money from Vice Chancellors? That looks a little bit far fetched. The long and short of it is that when somebody fails accreditation, he would begin to look for reason. I liken them to children who fail exams. They will say it is the teacher; the questions were not well set, etc. People find excuses for their failures. A good programme is a good programme anywhere. If the programme is good, nobody will deny it accreditation. NUC cannot be vindict ive because it does not touch accreditation results. It is a peer review system, where, as peers, we go from one institution to another to look at how all of us are doing, using the same tool - the Minimum Academic Standards. Any university that lost accreditation should just sit up, correct whatever deficiencies there are and move on. Should we expect to continue to see the weekly 'Monday Memo'? The Monday Memo was from the Executive Secretary. So the new Executive Secretary will have to decide whether it will be a Monday Memo, Tuesday Memo or no Memo at all. But my style is not new. While at LASU (as acting Vice Chancellor), 'LASU Bulletin' came out every month without fail and was distributed to all universities. The memo was the summary of the thinking of the Commission. You know management would meet every week and decide on so many things. But the Executive ES has the feel of the Commission and the Government because I related with my Minister and the President. So what I said in the Monday Memo was the voice of government. Now that your five-year term is over, what gives you the greatest satisfaction? That we left the Nigerian university system, a little better than we met it. I have done my own self-assessment, I give myself 3 over 10. We did our best but that is how far our best could take us. We thought we could have done more, but the odds, the challenges were too many. But we still managed, by the grace of God and with the assistance of Mr. President, to navigate our way through some of these challenges and break them down. What gives me joy is that, in terms of quality, we left the system better than it was in 2001 Any regrets? Any set goal(s) that was/were not achieved? There were two goals that I did not attain.We were getting rather relaxed regarding accreditation and sanctions that should be applied. I thought that we should carry out accreditation exercises, our quality assurance operations in a very transparent and very inclusive manner. And when we are sure we have done this we can apply the sanction as fairly and equitable as possible. I am glad that has yielded some results because people are now sitting up and the programmes that have dubious quality are now shot down. We have high hopes that the system will begin to response more positively to the quality of delivery that we are looking at. One of those areas that I wanted to see happen but did not happen to the level that I wanted was the National Digital Library Project. I was made the chairman of the Presidential Committee on National Digital Library Project. I didn't know I would be appointed ES NUC, so when I came here I said this is a good opportunity to get this thing to run . Till tomorrow we have not received a kobo from government for implementing this facility but we have forged on regardless. We have got funds from our local sources to put up this hub. We have been able to get the commitment of our universities to be able to hook up. We have been able to get some resource from the ETF to subscribe to international journals and electronic books. We are now going through the due process to be able to procure these electronic books and journals. My idea was that sometime in July we would get Mr. President to lunch the facility, but unfortunately, that is not going to happen before I leave. But definitely we are still going to flag off the project officially during the first week of August. That will give me a lot of happiness. When I was getting this project in place I toured quite a number of countries to see how it is done and I recruited three very bright Nigerians, highly skilled in computer technology, in virtual library development and I lost the three of them. So it would be a sad thing for me to leave the NUC without formally commissioning the digital library project. Of course it is in use and it has been running at the background but we have not done a formal commissioning for general use. But by God's grace this will happen, at least in memory of these three bright young Nigerians that we committed on the project. The other has to do with the satellite campuses. That was an agenda I came in with. I had thought that in three months I would have obliterated all of them from the face of the earth. We were able to demolish a large proportion of them but there are still a few hanging. So I go with the memories that there are few of these satellite campuses still operating. But I go also with the happiness that administration is continuous, that the next ES would take steps along with management of NUC to clear all these satellite campuses from the face of the earth. You said government has not given you any money for the Digital Library Project but ASUU alleges that NUC withdrew N600 million from the Stabilisation Fund to build this facility and purchase the National Open University House. Please clarify this. Let me give you a background to this. There is some money that government made available from the 1992 agreement with ASUU that periodically, it would keep some money, called stabilization fund, and meant to address problems when there is instability in the system. NUC decided to invest that money so that it doesn't lie fallow. By the time we took steps to close the satellite campuses, the Open University was being proposed. So the then Minister of Education, Professor Borishade said look, since you have closed down satellite campuses there are some problems in the system and to get it stabilized, let the Open University take off. The Open University had not got any budgetary provision for 2002 and since the stabilization fund is there, he now gave an authority that some building be purchased for the Open University to take off and that when it finally takes off, the money would be returned to the NUC. So that money was made available totaling N600 million, actually that mone y is just from the interest of the stabilisation fund, the fund is intact, in fact we have grown it significantly since that time. I don't know how much it is off hand, but it is much more above what we met in there. Then the Open University came on board and we have asked it to start paying, government and the National Assembly have intervened in this. So nobody is going to call me after my exit from NUC because up to the level of the President the matter has been resolved. I will not openly talk about how it was resolved, but the stabilisation fund is fully intact and is growing. I must warn that none of government's money was used in the digital library project. We did not touch the stabilisation fund. We depended on the goodwill of our development partners, some funds that we had slaved to save in NUC to get all of these things in place. As a manager of human and material resources that are put in your care you must see how you can squeeze out most mileage from such reso urces, you want to see how you can stretch your staff to get the best out of them, how you can stretch the financial resources that you have to get the best of it because of our belief that this facility is going to be very helpful in the pursuit of our mandate of quality university education. You were quoted as saying the nation should wait till 2009 for quality graduates and your survey conducted with NYSC members' reveals that 70 percent and above acquired knowledge where they graduated from. How do you explain this contradiction? I don't think there is any contradiction. For instance, people graduated from the university and we asked them how they assessed the programmes as preparing them for that job and 70 per cent of them said it actually prepared them for the job. The truth of the matter is that the bulk of the graduates that are the pollutants to the stock of the graduates from our universities are those from the part-time and sandwich programmes. These are people that are over-aged and would not do the NYSC so they were largely not captured in the survey. You will get to a university with 8,000 regular students and with about 30,000 part-time students or with an army of sandwich students in education and most of these part-time students don't have the requisite qualification to be in the university. I lament when I see some of these artisans, auto-mechanics, brick layers, all over the place who say they are doing part-time degree programme in X and Y University. All they want is some certificate . We have that crop of students who will later graduate and pollute the system. We have said, don't enroll more than 10 per cent of your total and that is going to cause a major improvement in the system. The finding of our survey does not in any way rub off negatively or discount with our 2009 projection. If I had my way it would be one per cent of the total enrolment for part-time students. But it has to be gradual from probably 10 per cent until there is total reduction in the enrolment. So no contradictions, we only reported what we. Any chances of continuation of some of your programmes? I am happy to note that the chances are very high that the new management of the NUC would go along the track of the efforts we set in motion to restore the Nigeria education system, not only to its old glory but to new glory and heights. The reason for my optimism is that the new Executive Secretary, Professor Julius Okojie worked in NUC for three years. He was part of the crack team that designed many of these initiatives, the ones I mentioned before, the conceptualization of the virtual library, NUTIP, many of these projects. He now has the golden opportunity of implementing or to carry on from where we stopped. What normally happens when you have a new helmsman is that he says he needs time to settle down, to be briefed. He may spend maybe one year getting briefed. But Prof. Okojie does not need to be briefed because he has been part of this. The good thing again is that he is coming on this job with fresh vision, with some new insights that we didn't think about because after he left us for eight months, he went into the private university system. How do you assess the private universities? ASUU alleges that some of them go to the older universities for their practicals? How old is the oldest private university? I will help you, it was established in 1999. It is mere seven years old. Take the University of Ibadan (UI) when it was seven years old and the worst of the private universities. UI is nowhere near in terms of infrastructure. So we approved the universities with infrastructure for take-off and they met all the minimum standards that were set for such take off. We kept them on their toes immediately after, we instituted an evaluation mechanism through our committee on the monitoring of private universities. That committee has about five Vice-Chancellors as members and they go mostly unannounced to these private universities to check out how they are doing and when they err with regards to any aspect of their operations, we sanction. We have not been announcing the sanction but the important thing is that over time they have been gradually improving. So for a seven-year-old university, I think from a fair assessment they have done quite well. About practicals being done in the older universities what is wrong with that? What is wrong with sharing of resources? I don't have evidence to confirm that but I know before a university is licensed we ensure that the wherewithal for teaching and learning for take-off is already be in place. They have laboratories to do their work. You did talk about teachers being shared. That is the hallmark of a rapidly developing university system and it is for a short while. This is the crawling stage. In another five to 10 years, we are going to see these universities stabilise. If it takes the older universities to mentor the younger ones, it is a direction we need to go. How successful was the 'sorting' campaign? Were some of those teachers sanctioned? The battle was waged at the level of universities and I am glad that at the end of the day many of you have reported on efforts made by different universities to deal with lecturers who have sorted. It is as a result of the war on sorting that we launched here, after which we asked the Vice Chancellors to do same and report back periodically what sanctions they have applied and what effects these sanctions are having on the 'sorters'. As you leave office, one of the things Nigerians would want you to clarify is the bribe-for-budget scandal? As you are aware the matter is in court and so I would not comment on that. Why is it so difficult for government and ASUU to reach an agreement? Have you read some of these agreements? I will tell you that the major provisions of the agreement had to do with funding and improved welfare scheme for university teachers. If I ask you if the funding has not improved since the 2001 agreement I'm sure you will say yes. I am also sure you will say yes that the welfare package of university teachers has improved. A lot of the matters raised in the agreement has been resolved and a few of the matters that are still lingering would be addressed in due course. What is the Nigerian University System Innovation Project (NUSIP) and the World Bank $100 million? In 2000, the World Bank had intended to assist the Nigerian University system and carroted before us $100 million. They did some studies and concluded that we needed innovation in ICT, innovation in this and that. I assumed duty August 3 and by 2001 August they were almost concluding the preparatory work towards getting NUSIP in place. Then the NUC management looked at the document in greater detail and found that most of the money would go into consultancies for the World Bank officers and only about five or 10 per cent would be available in Nigeria. Actually by 2002 March-April there was a National Stakeholders' Summit on Higher Education and we agreed that if money is going to be taken from anywhere it should go into the virtual library, each university should be given $2 million to buy equipment, install ICT infrastructure and the World Bank told us; oh no you cannot do that. And we said but we can if this money you are giving to us would be paid back. If it is going to b e paid back let us determine how it would be spent and they said no and then we said they should go back with their money. We didn't touch that money. It was returned in 2001. But the good thing is that after the World Bank intervened in basic education, we actually approached them to intervened in our science and technology education, which they did. What areas should your successor concentrate on? We have set in motion the machinery for the final nail on the heads of satellite campuses. Take University of Calabar for instance, it had formerly announced the closure of its satellite campuses since 2001 and followed up in 2002. I am sure that the university is true to this shut down but some people in Minna, Lagos are still setting up campuses, each claiming it is an offshore of the University of Calabar and that they are in league with university authorities that they would get their certificates. We had asked all the operators to send the students to the main campuses to complete their studies. Most of them completed their studies by 2005. But some of the contractors who are running these illegal campuses are still deceiving people. What we have found which I am going to pass over to the incoming ES is to ensure that the link between the contractors and the university stays cut. If satellite campus operators are unable to smuggle in their students' lists into the lists of the graduating students on campus, they will fizzle out with time. I assure you that in another year, they would die out. How many illegal schools have been shut? Let me define illegal. They are schools that are not registered or licensed to operate as a university in Nigeria either as a parent institution in Nigeria or as an off-shore campus. We have shut eight of such institutions. I am not talking about satellite campuses because we have shut down about 98 per cent of them. Where do you go from here? I am going to be on sabbatical for a year. I intend to do a number of things. I want to go and study, to deepen my understanding of computer technology. I want to service several of my UNESCO engagements. I want to service some World Bank engagements. I want to complete some books I am writing, especially books on Science Education and Higher Education. So it is going to be a very busy year. After that, we just leave it to God to guide future developments. The future is not ours to say. We are still in the university system. I love to do my teaching, I like to do my research and train my post-graduate students so I am still very much around. You know I am on leave of absence from my university (LASU), so we'll just see how events unfold after the sabbatical year. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com) |