• ‘FG should’ve expanded existing public varsities, than establishing new ones’

In the concluding part of this interview, Prof Ademola Dasylva, a retired Professor of African and Oral literature, and former Dean of Faculty of Arts at University of Ibadan (UI), speaks with KAYODE OLANREWAJU about the rot in university system, the sad narrative of military disservice to university education development, challenges of lecture room congestion, mismanagement of TETFund allocations, and soaring student population with huge gap in infrastructure in the nation’s higher institutions, among other critical issues

At what point did we get it wrong as a country in university development?

Of course, predictably the gross decay set in due to a substantial and deliberate cut in university funding, besides the fact that some critical benefits of staff and students were also withdrawn. In other words, public universities were deliberately starved of adequate funding. And, thus, they had continued to receive little or inadequate funding support for many years, and the first casualties were the infrastructure, due to lack of means for maintenance.

Also, I could recall what happened when General Yakubu Gowon, as the Head of State, was the Visitor to University of Ibadan, and Prof Oritsejolomi Thomas, was the Vice-Chancellor. During one of the university’s convocation ceremonies back then, the Vice Chancellor (Prof Oritsejolomi) in his welcome address had, among other things, appealed to the Head of State and Visitor to the University (General Gowon) to consider improving the funding of the University of Ibadan.

But, in his response, the Visitor, General Gowon, removed the academic cap from the Vice-Chancellor’s head, turned its inside up, and moved round mockingly, asking guests at the podium for donation on behalf of the university ViceChancellor. It was that ridiculous. Meanwhile, the universities kept taking in more and more students. In a short time student admission had tripled with zero attention to adequate funding, physical and infrastructural maintenance, as well as expansion to accommodate the poorly planned numerical increase.

Therefore, lecture rooms, student hostels, staff offices, among others were, and still are, inadequate and overcrowded. It was then often the basis for student protests, and the incessant industrial actions by the academic staff union, the purpose of which was to compel the attention of the government for adequate funding and arrest, among other things, the apparent infrastructural decay, welfare of students and staff.

Fast forward, with the creation of 12 states and subsequent additional states to make a total of 36 states, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, each state also decided to establish its own universities but hardly paying attention to details such as, adequate funding, and quality infrastructures. Today, some states have two or more state universities, most of which are still lacking in basic infrastructure, laboratories, and other relevant facilities.

You blamed university crises mostly on lack of future projection by the military leadership, especially the role played by General Yakubu Gowon and General Olusegun Obasanjo, respectfully, as Heads of State. Do you mean that the military brought about the rot in the system?

That is to state the obvious. And, as if that was not bad enough, I learned recently that the name of University of Abuja (UNIABUJA) has been changed to Yakubu Gowon University, Abuja. I was surprised because his tenure as Head of State for about nine years remained a dark spot for the Nigerian academics, and the entire Nigerian University System.

Besides drastically reducing the funding of the federal universities, his government removed almost all the privileges and subsidies of the academics and the students. For the first time in the history of the Nigerian universities, Gowon as Head of State ordered out all university lecturers from their university staff quarters for protesting against poor funding.

Like I said, as the Visitor to the University of Ibadan, Prof Oritsejolomi Thomas in his convocation address to welcome the Visitor and other invited dignitaries had appealed to General Gowon, the Head of State, for an improved funding to the university, among other things.

In his response, the boyish General Gowon, who was barely 35 years old then, went to the elderly Prof Oritsejolomi Thomas the Vice Chancellor, removed his academic cap, turned up the inside and playfully went around the invited dignitaries asking them to donate to the university, to mock the Vice Chancellor, and the university system.

That to anyone with a sense of history was sacrilegious to the spirit and traditions of the university system. It is curious enough that it is the same character that has now been honored with one of Nigeria’s great universities. We definitely must have lost our sense of history in this country.

I am also surprised that the Governing Council and Senate, and the Vice Chancellor, and the Alumni Association of the university didn’t see anything wrong with that. I could recall that when the Federal Government tried to change the name of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) to honour the Late Chief MKO Abiola, the university’s Governing Council, the Senate, Vice Chancellor and the UNILAG Alumni Association were vehemently opposed to it, and they had their way. That is the way things should run in a sane society.

I am not against immortalising the retired General Yakubu Gowon for his “great achievements,” perhaps in some other significant areas of Nigeria’s history, perhaps not, but the Nigerian university system certainly should be none of it. He should not have been honoured or identified with any public university’s name. He doesn’t deserve that honour, if you ask me. In fact, till date he has not apologised or deemed it right to apologise for his reckless adult delinquency, the way he treated the Nigerian academia, and the university system.

This underscores my position that the man doesn’t deserve such an honour of having a university named after him, not after what he did to destroy both the morale of the Professors he ordered out of the staff quarters; or the academic cap he pulled off the head of the elderly Vice Chancellor of the nation’s premier university, University of Ibadan. It would be a different matter if he had tendered a public apology, but that has not happened.

It is that apology that could erase that very ugly and unimaginable desecration of both the academia and the university tradition. General Gowon’s contribution to the Nigerian university system was negative and unedifying; during an economy in which the government ludicrously opined that the problem of Nigeria is not money, but how to spend it. Also, at a time students had a highly subsidised feeding scheme.

Their food or meals were served by the cafeteria system that operated the Central Cafeteria and a cafeteria attached to each student’s hostel. They employed professionals and they also ensured balanced diets for the students; ditto the laundry service which was free. The laundry people would go round the hostels to collect students’ dirty clothes, bedsheets and pillowcases; they would wash, iron, and return them or drop them at the doorstep of every room within the same week.

Again, it was General Olusegun Obasanjo regime that jerked up the daily meal by 100 per cent (50 Kobo), and it was the cause of the nationwide “Ali-Must-Go” protest by university students.

Then Colonel Ali was the Minister of Education at the time. Then, there was no record of class or lecture room congestion. The academic sessions had run without any rupturing, and the long vacation had been three months straight, and quite regular.

With the establishment of more universities the problem of congestion in the nation’s public higher institutions lecture halls still persists.

Yes, of course, the Federal Government instead of expanding existing public universities, in its rather curious wisdom, had embarked on establishing more universities, first in every state of the federation, and very recently, more specialised universities for the Police Force, Air Force, and the Navy. Whereas the so-called specialised universities should simply have been additional academic departments in relevant faculties in the existing universities. The huge sums of money spent on overheads, and infrastructure in the new universities could have gone into expanding existing public universities.

The malady has even gone beyond that because the establishment of universities both at federal and state levels has become part of the dividends of democracy and such that universities are all over the place, like someone suffering from diarrhea. It is now a common sight to cite universities in the backyards of notable members of the ruling class. Unfortunately, that is the recklessness of the kind of Constitution the country runs permits, and that takes us back to my opening statement of this interview.

Unfortunately, these same new universities are soon to find themselves in the same appalling state of inadequate infrastructure and funding. I deliberately left out the private universities in the discourse for obvious reasons, besides that most of them pay attention to infrastructure and adequate funding largely because of their competitiveness.

ASUU has expressed its readiness to join the Federal Government to probe corrupt practices and mismanagement of TETFund allocations by some heads of institutions, what is your take on this?

Well, this takes me to ASUU’s call asking the Federal Government to probe the mismanagement of TETFund allocations to the universities. I am not surprised one bit, and I am not enthusiastic about the demand. You will perhaps recall that the very idea of TETFund and VATs, among others, were the brainchild of ASUU, some years past, in its efforts to assist the government to find an enduring solution to inadequate funds to run the universities. It was part of its blueprint offered freely to the government during one of its negotiations.

The frustrating thing about such demands, here is, in recent years how many of such investigations, in particular, Visitation Panels to many of the universities that were long concluded and their reports submitted, that the government had acted on? How many times, or how many officials have been sacked, or sent to jail as a result of such reports?

Perhaps, there are things that I am not aware of and in which case it must have been done selectively, if at all. It is the reason for the impunity we witness today, and the reason for the dysfunction of the university system. Having said that, with my little experience, some universities in Nigeria have no business complaining of lack of funds, or inadequate funding considering the huge amount they rake in periodically.

Mismanagement is the bane here, some folks believe it is a sort of largesse and they simply fritter the money to pursue inanities, then queue up with other less-privileged universities asking for funds from the government. Now, some offices have been politicized, and appointments into such offices have become a do-or-die affair. And, since the officials at the end of their tenure would go with their official cars, house furniture, they become a priority over and above other important places needing urgent attention.

Money that could have gone into improving the quality of service in some units, go straight into acquisition of those items that the officials would end up carting away. Unfortunately, the corruption we are complaining about in our universities now has spilled over to relevant ministries and other government agencies as well. Or, it could even be the other way round.

That is, some relevant ministries and agencies most probably have succeeded in corrupting the already vulnerable universities, through some rather impossible officials. Until such investigations are made to grow fangs and canines, and could ensure that justice is duly served in order to make officials that are found guilty pay severely for their “crimes” against the university system, the general decay we complain about shall persist to eternity.

The huge students’ scripts and courses many lecturers have to contend with in their large classes is said to be limiting research output in the system in many instances, how do you react to this?

Not one course, not two for the lecturers, but between three and four courses per semester. In the past 10 or so years, I have witnessed a situation where in some Departments some lecturers teach as many as five, six or seven courses.

You wondered why or how? That is part of the abnormalities academic staff members are faced with in many universities that I am aware of in public and private universities. At the beginning, I mentioned how we managed to cope with the situation in our days.

A lecturer could cope with lecturing a thousand or more students in one stretch. The problem really is coping with the tutorial assignment. While we hope that the funding situation may improve, pending the time, the Departments could make it a policy to involve their doctoral students to assist their supervisors with the tutorial classes, script grading, attendance, and so on.

That is a huge burden taken off already. That way, perhaps such lecturers could have enough time for research, that is, if at all. But, the best and enduring solution is to have adequate funding to employ more hands, and to introduce tutorial assistantship to support lecturers for the undergraduate programmes, so that they could still have a breathing space for research.

Today, tutorials have become an alien in the university system due to the huge student population, resulting in large classes and overcrowded lecture halls.

That is unfortunate. Looking back in the system then, tutorial classes were usually handled by junior lecturers, or tutorial assistants drawn from PhD students in the departments. They were made to sit-in, observe and listen to the lecturers. The lecturers were usually Senior Faculty members or Professors.

Normally, no question was entertained during lecture hours. Students reserved their questioning to the tutorial classes when they could ask questions, and they also could be asked questions on the lecture topics, or made to write written tests, or take-home assignments by their tutors. There could be two, three or four tutors for a course, and each tutor could have two or three tutorial groups to handle for a course per week. Attendance was taken for the lectures, and for each tutorial class, again by the tutors.

It was so well organised. Of course, academic programmes had run a full sessional course at the end of which examinations were conducted. It was known then as the dreaded “Almighty June.” There was provision for a re-sit during the long vacation should anyone fail one or two courses. Well, that was the legacy the existing colonial government handed over to our pioneer nationalists who took over the reign of governance.

Then, each region replicated what the standard was at the nation’s premier University of Ibadan, the North had Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria; the West had the University of Ife, Ile-Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), the East had the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and the MidWest, University of Benin, Benin City. Each of the universities had adhered strictly to world standards in structures and infrastructure, academic programmes, and staffing recruitment was made open and global, and admissions by concessional examinations were organised individually by each university. In fact, the staff and students were drawn from the very best, first across the country, and the globe. No overcrowded lecture rooms, nor slums for hostels.

Then came a generation that hadn’t the faintest idea about what a university culture or tradition was like. And, that was the military regime. The regional universities were taken over by the Federal Government. From their body language and erratic disposition it was obvious that the military had issues with the special treatment the university communities were getting, and it looked like the military was set to demystify what had become known as the universality of the university tradition and culture.