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Adiukwu, On a Mission to Rescue Uniabuja [interview]
[August 28, 2014]

Adiukwu, On a Mission to Rescue Uniabuja [interview]


(AllAfrica Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Prof Michael Adiukwu is the new Vice Chancellor of the University of Abuja (UNIABUJA). Adiukwu, a professor of Pharmaceutics at the University of Nigeria (UNN), Nsukka, in this interview, bares his mind on the Nigerian education sector, research and development, and how he intends to turn UNIABUJA into a centre for world-class research. The former National Coordinator of the World Bank-funded Science and Technology Education Post-Basic Project (STEP-B), spoke to EMEKA ANUFORO and KANAYO UMEH in Abuja.



Excerpts: Do you agree with suggestions that public universities should be given full autonomy? IT depends on your definition of full autonomy. If you are talking of full autonomy, where universities will have to generate funds by themselves, we have not reached that stage in this country, but there is a proverb that says 'He who pays the piper, dictates the tune.' If the Federal Government is funding universities, automatically, it would also want to dictate the direction that the money goes and what it is used for.

Even though our tertiary education system is young (the first university came around 1948 or 1950), we have reached a point, where we need to also do what is happening elsewhere. A lot of things are coming from research and education sectors into the markets.


Do you know that if you have an orphan disease for instance (orphan disease affects the population of not more than a 10, 000) and you want to bring outsiders, to come and help you, they may not be willing because it is not economically viable. With the outbreak of Ebola virus in some West African countries today, Nigeria and other African experts should be in the forefront of finding a solution to it. But people are still coming from Europe to address this. How long will this take? These are some of the things we need to address urgently. When you are depending on another country, and there is crisis, which makes them not to have any access to you, what will you do? UNIABUJA has witnessed its fair share of crisis and so people are expecting so much from you as the school strives to bounce back. What are your plans for the university? I have a lot of plans for the university. In fact, I am already working on some. First, is the area of human capacity development. Can we internationalise this university, make our people here to go overseas for postdoctoral researches and bring young ones to Nigeria to come and look at what we are doing? Yes we can. If you bring people here who are well versed in research, our people will look at them and they will be forced to learn what these people are doing.

These are some of the issues that we want to look at. We want to transform the university into a centre known for excellence in scholarship. If you go to the United States for instance, when you are talking about law for instance, Yale University stands out as number one. When you are talking about engineering, you are talking about Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and things like that. We must come out strongly at least in a few areas.

Since we are a university at the centre, we should be noted for something so that people can look at us and say, this is a Nigerian university. We are looking at making the entire university ICT complaint, such that anywhere you are, you can access the Internet. We are talking to some companies, but it is too early and I am even still floating. By the time I settle down, I am going to look at some of the ideas I think I should focus on to make this university viable.

Stakeholders have also over the years carpeted this university for failing to be relevant in its own environment, particularly Abuja where majority of the people are government workers who don't have the luxury of time. The university has failed to meet their needs. People come here for Masters degree and spend three to four years doing that. That has to change because we are looking at what can be done to have quick wins for those who would want to do their Masters here. We are all aware that people want additional certificates. So, we are revamping our institutes like the Institute of Legislative Studies, that of corruption studies, Centre for Distance Learning as well as our sandwich programme. These are places that we can use to generate a lot of funds. Though some of them have gone moribund, but with little effort, we will be able to bring them back to life.

Some courses run by the school are not accredited. What are your plans for them? Yes, I am already talking to the National Universities Commission (NUC). Even our Centre for Distance Learning is not currently on. In fact, I want to have a committee that would be looking at just accreditation. We also need to look at the gaps that need to be bridged so that we can have these accreditations be they in the areas of staffing, equipment and or structure.

Any plans by your administration to put an end to the incessant strikes embarked upon by the various unions in the university? The unions should be allowed to do what they want to do. That is why we are talking about democracy. But it should not be injurious to the system because we are building a system not just for ourselves, but for our children. Many of the people you are talking about have their children in this university. So if you are not working, who is suffering? Your children and my children are the ones suffering. If you pay me N2, 000, 000 and my children are unemployed, we all know the implications. So, when we are looking at the macro structures in any society, we should always know that we must be careful, else we destroy that structure and everybody suffers. We have been speaking to each other, and we have been very friendly. Some of the problems started before I came. However, I will immediately attack those ones that I can attack. As far as we have this understanding, I think we would be able to move together and we will all be friends without any problem.

What will you want to be remembered for on completion of your tenure? I want us to get this university to the level that when people come in here, they would come to the conclusion that this is actually a university. What do I mean by that? I am referring to universality of ideas and universality of human beings. If you go to any university in Ghana for instance, you will see white people there. How many have you seen on this campus? Not even the Indians.

When I was in one university in Japan, each time I enter that university, I used to tell myself that this is a real university. A university should be known even by its outlook, not one with a one-page sized signboard with the inscription University of Abuja.

Each time I come in here, I look at the signboard and I say, I think something is basically wrong here. So, we will look at so many things, and the outlook also has to change. We will need to go out for the funds, plead with the Federal Government and other sources because there are a lot of people who have goodwill for this university. We will tap into all that in order to change the fortune of this university.

Copyright The Guardian. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).

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