Students and University Management as Partners in Progress: Some Practical Experience

Idowu Olayinka
Vice-Chancellor, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria
Chairman"s Remarks at the Public Presentation of a Book written by an Undergraduate Student of the University.

Onifade Bello Abdurrahman, 2017
Student Unionism in Nigeria: Challenges and Strategies. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press.
PROTOCOL

It is a great pleasure for me to be the Chairman and Chief Host at this programme which has been put together by friends and associates of Onifade Bello Abdurrahaman to present his new book with the title ‘Student Unionism in Nigeria: Challenges and Strategies’ published by Ibadan University Press. One is highly elated that Onifade, an undergraduate student in our Department of Library, Archival and Information Studies has been able to write a book.
I had the privilege of perusing the manuscript and I am able to confirm that what we are presenting today is the product of painstaking research by the author, who has demonstrated that he is a budding scholar.
I have read a few scholarly articles on students’ unionism in Nigeria but nearly all of them were written by senior academics and administrators, who have left active student unionism behind a long time before writing such books. The unique feature about the book that is being presented this afternoon is that it has been authored by someone who is currently a student activist in his own right, as the immediate Past Speaker of the Students’ Representative Council. By writing from a student’s perspective, it is not surprising to me that there are some gaps in his narration which I do not agree with but those issues do not detract from the quality this outstanding intellectual work. The challenge is for me to also put pen to paper to present my viewpoint on some of these issues at the appropriate time.
It is our conviction that student leadership should be a platform for promoting developmental and youth-led activities that are pivotal to steering creativity, innovation, growth, and stability in our university and nation at large.
Student leaders can be engaged in agenda setting for the institution without necessarily being confrontational and insulting personalities. Great men discuss ideas. I make reference here to an event that took place on this Campus on 6 August 2014 at the swearing-in ceremony of the then new President of the Students’ Union for the 2013/2014 Session, Oluwafemi V. Odesola. He identified 10 major problems facing students of the institution :
i. Limited municipal services including difficulty in intra-campus transportation, electricity and potable water supply,
ii. Poor internet facility
iii. Inefficient service delivery at the University Health Clinic,
iv. Exorbitant fee on add and delete form among postgraduate students
v. Poor welfare of students on the Practical Year Training Programme
vi. Undue stress in the clearance of graduating students
vii. Inefficiency of the Industrial Training Coordinating Centre
viii. Poorly developed kitchenette facilities
ix. Obsolete library facilities
x. Inadequately equipped and poorly maintained science laboratory facilities
My late dad was for many years a farmer. As a five-year old I started to follow him to his farm, before I began formal schooling. On a particular day, I gave him a piece of advise, the implication of which I did not either appreciate or understand fully at the time. Somehow, my father was so impressed with my innocuous comment that on getting home he told my mother, uncles and cousins about the outstanding quality of the advise that I had given him earlier in the day. Yet, my dad was 49 years older than me. The relevance of this private story is that I do not ignore the advise of any one no matter how tender the age of the person. What makes it even more compelling is that as academics, we can always agree to disagree without being disagreeable. Moreover, I cannot learn anything from anyone with whom I always agree.
Nonetheless, as Africans, we need to show respect for elders. This has not changed even with the so-called western civilization or modernization. The motto of my secondary school is ‘E huwa Omoluwabi’ which can be roughly translated to mean ‘Be a gentle man’. As would be expected, some of my experience and exposure have defined my essence.
As we speak, there are many members of the academic staff at the University of Ibadan who taught me as an undergraduate here from 1977 till 1981 and are still very much around. All of them, without a single exception, relate to me as mentors and I am ever so proud of them for the mentorship. It is for me a privilege to stand on the shoulders of these giants. If you want to go far in life you certainly need mentors, including your teachers.
I may be naïve but my reading of the posture of some students of the University of Ibadan is that they do not understand the fact that the staff are here in loco parentis for them. Instead the students in this category, which in reality may not be more than 1% of the total student population compete for space and relevance with their lecturers and professors and even claim superiority over them.
I am aware that the average age of an undergraduate student on admission to the University of Ibadan is 19 years. The students come here as adolescents and leave as young adults after four, five or six years.
As Africans we pray that our children should achieve much more than us. Either by design or by default, the Faculty in particular have the onerous responsibility to mould the character of the students, in and out of the lecture rooms. Remember that our degree is awarded in character and learning. The question any discerning student should ask himself or herself is who decides whether a student has been found worthy in character and/or learning. Interrogating this simple question would help us a lot in our sojourn in this premier university. Without any doubt, Senate is the highest authority and in fact the final arbiter in all academic matters in the university including but not limited to the admission, examination, curriculum, discipline and award of degrees. It would greatly assist us if we find out about the composition of the Senate.
If you asked an engineer ‘what is 2 plus 2”, his/her answer is most likely to be 4.000. If you posed the same question to a geologist, he/she would say it is something between 3 and 5. On the other hand, to a geophysicist, the answer is ‘it depends on the processing parameters’. As a geoscientist one has been trained to think in four dimensions and to make realistic inferences even in the presence of noise and in the absence of adequate data.
For reasons that are still very difficult for me to understand, a segment of students here tries very hard to demonise me. Yet my nearly 30 years experience as a lecturer, the last 18 years as a full professor suggests otherwise. I have had the privilege to teach and supervise many students of Geology and Petroleum Engineering. Nearly all of them have remained my very good friends and in one way or the other they are members of my extended academic family. If I were such a demon this could not have been the case, more so when many of them have since completed their degree programmes here many years ago.
I caused the Directorate of Public Communication to publish a Special Bulletin detailing the Executive Summary of my 16-point Agenda on the first day I took office on 1 December 2015. Rather than see the essence of the effort to intimate all stakeholders on my vision and mission and the action plan, some student activists took me to the cleaners on the pretext that I claimed that staff and students would be my number 1 and number 2 priorities, respectively. In my humble opinion numbering one as 1 and the other as 2 does not necessarily suggest that one is inferior to the other. Obviously the volume of insults I received from students on account of this was totally unwarranted and unprovoked. The students in this category were negatively influenced and manipulated internally by some members of the academic staff and some externally induced meddlesome interlopers one of whom even approached the law court to stop my assumption of office.
It was as if they probably never imagined and found it difficult to accept the reality that someone who had been Head of Department, two-term Dean of the Postgraduate School, elected member of the Council representing the Senate and two-term Deputy Vice-Chancellor, among other preferment, both locally and outside the shores of this country could ever emerge as the Vice-Chancellor at his alma mata.
Assuming without conceding that I prioritized staff over students why should that be to the detriment of the interest of the students. It is acknowledged the world over that a university is as good as its academic staff. One begins to wonder whether the students would not be the ultimate beneficiaries if staff welfare were to be a topmost priority.
Over the past week, I have been subjected to all manners of insults and savage attacks from some staff and students just because I wanted the Semester examinations to go ahead, as approved by the University Senate. I guess it is part of the hazard of the game. All I know is that history will vindicate the just.
A few days ago, a gentleman whose face I could not easily recollect called me on phone. I did not have his name on my contact list. He went ahead to introduce himself as the father of one of our 200 level students whom I had assisted to transfer from the Department of History to the Faculty of Law at the beginning of the current session. He was full of gratitude and praises for me. In this particular instance, his daughter had applied to the University of Ibadan to read law during the 2015/2016 session. Unfortunately, the girl missed the merit cut-off mark for Law by one mark and was eventually offered a place in History which she accepted. In this particular case, the girl in question had earlier spent three years as a student of law with the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). She withdrew from NOUN because of challenges with the accreditation of the law programme of that institution.
A few years ago, a final year student in our Faculty of Law missed writing one of his papers due to a mix-up with his course registration form. The matter was referred to me as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic). By our much cherished tradition at the University of Ibadan, once a student missed his/her examination at the University the standard procedure is to be allowed to take the examination at the next available opportunity. In this particular instance, this would have meant that the affected student would be spending two extra semesters. After necessary investigation the case was resolved in favour of this student. We had to invoke the doctrine of necessity by requesting the Faculty to solve the riddle. Consequent upon this intervention, followed by the recommendation of the Faculty Board of Law and Executive Approval by the Vice-Chancellor, the student was allowed to sit for the examination which he passed. He subsequently graduated with a Second Class Honours (Upper Division), proceeded to the Nigerian Law School and has since been called to the bar. You do not get more student-friendly than this as an academic.
As Head of the Department of Geology, one of my students who was then resident in Queen Idia Hall approached me to endorse her form as a candidate for a Hall Executive position. I inquired about her academic performance and found out that she was below average. As a parent myself, I warned her that she should go and study harder rather than spend precious time as a student politician. This particular girl later graduated, but not until after spending one extra session. Only God knows what would have happened if she had been involved with student politics at the hall level, given her average academic ability.
I once had a male student in the Department of Geology who was struggling with his academics. From his transcripts it became obvious that, although he had enough grades to remain in the Department, he could not possibly graduate with anything better than a Third Class degree. I counseled him to seek a transfer to another course where he could possibly have a new start and earn a better degree. He agreed and he was eventually accepted my well-considered advise. He finished with a Second Class Honours (Lower Division) in his new programme. He later came back for a Master degree in that same discipline after his national service. He is today an enterpreneur in Lagos. I am very happy the he took my advise.
The point being made here is that I have always being a champion and advocate of the rights and privileges that could be extended to students without breaking any of our extant laws and guidelines. I have canvassed this at several fora and many members of the University Senate in particular and academic staff in general can attest to this claim.
Ever since the decade long ban on student unionism was lifted in 2011, we have had quite a number of outstanding student leaders who were focused and never forgot the primary reason why they came here in the first instance. I remember Ekhator Edosa Raymond (now a medical doctor), Wuraola Olatinwo, Ayantola Alayande Maximus (B.A. First Class Honours), Oluwafemi Adesola, Olateju Aliyu Oladimeji, Nifemi Ojo, Seun Adebiyi, among others. My interaction with them suggest to me that they meant well and understood their primary purpose for coming to the University of Ibadan which is to study and earn a degree while also engaging in leadership training. I am afraid that undue radicalism exhibited some other students leaders, in my humble opinion are largely destructive. As younger persons, you are full of energy, vigour, ideas and often impatient. All these are quite understandable. But the staff also have experience behind them which you may not be able to purchase off the shelf.
The National Association of Nigerian Students (NAN) Dimension
Many of us attending this programme will vividly recollect the events of March 2016, popularly referred to as the ‘Free Mote Campaign’ and its 2017 version in May 2017, which centred around ‘No identity Card, No Examination’.
Tunji Ekpeti (also known as Mote) was then a 400 level student of Petroleum Engineering who faced the Students Disciplinary Committee and was rusticated for one Semester. He had a right of appeal to the Governing Council. But rather than take up this opportunity to explain his innocence, he went to externalise the matter by requesting his friends from various post-secondary institutions in Oyo State to invade our Campus. Some of them wore heavy masks. There was real threat to lives and property on account of which the institution was closed.
The students took to the social media to disparage me and called me all manners of names. I choose to ignore all the vituperations.
Fast forward by two years. NANS Oyo State is again, claiming it is intervening on a purely domestic and internal affairs of the University of Ibadan. Yet, their unsolicited intervention in 2016 as part of the so-called Free Mote Campaign was unproductive and led to the closure of the institution for six weeks.
Excerpts from the demands by NANS include the following:
'NANS is an organised body with clear Goals as stated in its Charter of Demand or Constitution. The body acts in a Non-anarchical and Organized way. We follow Due Process and to be clear too, NANS is vested with the Responsibility of Protecting the Rights and Interests of Students across all Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria and Abroad.
We are aware of the situation in which the University of Ibadan is in right now and for the sake of the records our intervention is due. Therefore, we are coming for the purpose of liberating the Students of the University of Ibadan.
We have made an official contact with the school management today and believe that the School Management will warmly receive the Intervention Team and we hope to have a fruitful discussion in the coming days''.
And from the former President of the Students’ Union, Ojo Aderemi:
'I have made presentations to the Senate of NANS countless times. I simply want the truth to play out. Not forgetting that NANS, which is the umbrella body of all Nigerian students, has a duty to protect its members if the body deems it fit, and that I am not opposed to NANS intervention. But common sense requires that things have to be done accordingly, and I know for a fact that NANS, as an intellectual body, respects such'.
This is part of the fundamental problem and a lack of understanding of protocol that we have on our hands. How can some faceless "students" from all manner of post-secondary institutions - Colleges of Agriculture, Cooperative College, School of Statistics, School of Forestry and the likes- come from wherever to the University of Ibadan and think they can dictate to the Management on how to solve our internal problems? It just won't happen, under my watch as the Vice-Chancellor. It is indeed a joke taken too far. Their so-called official contact with UI Management is dead on arrival. It has no place in our conflict resolution process. By my understanding, an appeal is not exactly the same thing as giving orders. We should always note the difference.
Concluding Remarks
On a final note, it is my greatest pleasure to once again congratulate Onifade Bello for his book. I am sure some of the issues he has raised would interest various stakeholders in the higher education sector in our dear country. The book will serve as a useful addition to the body of literature on student unionism in contemporary Nigeria. I will arrange to send a copy to each of the 160 Vice-Chancellors currently serving in the Nigerian University System (40 Federal; 46 State and 74 Private Universities). I am sure my colleagues will have a better understanding of students’ perspective of unionism after reading Onifade’s book.
Thank you for your kind attention and God bless.
Idowu Olayinka
Vice-Chancellor
University of Ibadan
Ibadan

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One of the replies below:

Banjo Damilola
Dear Sir,

I read this very long address with open mind and I am glad I could tune down my bias.

First, I should apologize to you and maybe your son. I was very (still is) angry when the Union was arbitrarily suspended because of an issues that could have been amicably solved. So, at the heat of the suspension, I and few of my friends trolled your son on Twitter. My thinking was, maybe his son would talk to him and maybe he would listen. Also because, I could not bring myself to direct anything at you at the time as I know my anger would betray me. In deterrence to you, I spoke 'at' your son.

Nonetheless, I must say that most of what I have seen and heard of you are in total opposite to what you have written here.

My first encounter with your name and your tenure was after your inauguration speech. I, like many of my friends, perceived from your speech that the students mean little to you. Your speech came off as though your loyalty rest with just the lecturer.

Indeed, that speech set the pace for every other engagements you've had with the students.

ASUU and NASU have had different issues since you because VC. The school have had to be shut because of them. In fact, there was a time they turned UI gate into a buka. You did not suspend their operations neither did you invite Oyo State commissioner of police to threaten them with death. All of these you did to our union without betting an eyelid. You never condemned the commissioner who said he would kill your children. You did say you are the students' locus perrentis. I guess to you, the 'bad' child should be served to the wolves as meal. What happens to the bad parents? What animals do we serve them to?

I agree maybe the current president (to me he will always be) might have gone wrong with his approaches but yours were not saintly either, with all due respect sir.

The issues the Union raise are legitimate. They have rights to demand better welfare. Students have always demanded for better welfare. Even when they were served chicken, some students still protested for more. It is human nature. But the way you handle such agitations determine what kind of leader you are.

The students tried to consult with you before the "No ID card, No exams" protest. Reports have it that you never gave them a chance. On the day of the protest, they waited for you to address them before they left the school premises, hoping your presence will dissuade the already agitated students from protesting, but you did not show up. They called you, but calls went unanswered.

The only meeting you had with the student leaders was the one you allegedly stormed out and labelled the president "a beardless 200 level students".

Sir, you really did not give the student leaders any choice.

After the whole issue became messy, you went on Punch to disparage the students and their elected leaders. You claimed there was no funds to print student ID cards, yet there was funds to buy a page on punch newspaper. I am not questioning your judgment sir. I am only trying to let you see why some of us (old students) don't believe any of the claims you have listed in this post.

One of my most respected lecturers once told me how nice and friendly you are. I want to believe him because I respect him so much and because I can always trust his judgement but then, I see all of these things you've done, particularly to the Union.

Sir, you once said in one of your posts that Uites who were around when the institution had no Union are not any less than those around when the Union was alive. I agree with you! But, what you might have missed is that the Union groomed some of us.

Personally, the most cherished years of my stay in the premier university were those I spent learning leadership.

Sir, I was a good student, the Union did not corrupt or derail me. I also finished with second class (upper division) and I was neck deep into student politics up to the Union level. I was a member of Students Representative council and a committee secretary. I was also Queens' Hall chairperson. I held some legislative posts in my department too.

While I am not demeaning the efforts of my lecturers in anyway, what I learnt while leading students shaped some of my beliefs today.

So, to take Union off the campus is to take away opportunity for self discovery from many of those young adults.

Let me also quickly touch on the issue of the young man your administration expelled because of a Facebook post. Sir, I felt you chopped off the head for slight headache. Like I said, I am not questioning your judgement, I am only trying to tell you why we (some old students and current students) seem not to like you. It was reported that the said boy apologised before the disciplinary committee, yet his education was mercilessly cut short or maybe stalled.

He could have been punished in other ways but you threw him out of the school. I have read on your Facebook a long article where you berated the former president. He could have had you removed from the university of Ibadan and nothing would have happened. He was President and this is Nigeria after all. You probably would have gone to court to fight your case and one of your defense would have been "Freedom of expression".

On Mote's case, Mr. VC sir, you once again showed that you meant your inaugural speech. A boy joined a protest. He did not lead the protest. He did not call for the protest. He merely joined out of solidarity with his colleagues but he was rusticated for two good years. Haba! Is it written anywhere that once you're on internship, you stop being a student of Unibadan?

When countries protest, they sometimes seek support of their people in the diaspora. Would we then say it is wrong for people to show solidarity?

I am happy that you took the opportunity of the launch to speak on these issues. You should however accord to yourself some blames too and maybe reflect on many students related decisions you have taken since you became VC.

Again, I want to believe all you've said about yourself and all my lecturer said about you. Please sir, help make it easy for me.

Some more replies to Idowu Olayinka(Vice Chancellor, University of Ibadan)
Dare Adesina
I have read your narrative meticulously and it has mirrored the outstanding capacity and character that you have always portrayed dated back to when I was a student in our great university of Ibadan.


Tunde Famuyantan
Congratulations to Onifade Bello Abdurrahman for the success of this publication and the leadership of the University for putting in place the enabling environment that made realisation of this academic exercise possible. It's indeed another achievement for the University's management headed by Prof. A. I. Olayinka.
As the parent of the student from NOUN that was mentioned in your remarks, I can confidently testify to the fact that you're very passionate about the issues bothering on academic and welfare of the students. The ways and manner with which you handled the matter is enough confirmation of this fact. I make bold to say that your sterling leadership qualities are exemplary and worthy of emulation by those presently in leadership positions and aspiring ones. Your love for doing things based on merit, equity, fairplay and justice as displayed when the issue was being resolved is heartwarming and highly commendable.
My family will ever remain grateful to you, DVC (Academics) and all others that made the change of course from History to Law possible as this has given the much needed opportunity for her to launch herself back to her original course of study and the pathway to realise her much cherished ambition to become a lawyer of note.
May GOD, in his infinite mercies, continue to be with you all. Thank you sir, Mr. Vice-Chancellor.