They are fighting me because I found a driver earning N1m monthly – Prof Oshodin, UNIBEN VC


By Simon Ebegbulem

University of Benin (UNIBEN) has been in the news of late over the allegation that the management favours the employment of Bini natives to the detriment of others. In this interview, the vice chancellor, Prof Osayuki Oshodin, responds. Oshodin spoke after a Fellowship Award was conferred on him by the Nigeria Institute of Entrepreneurs.


UNIBEN was ranked the best university in the country recently. How were you able to achieve that?

It is the result of hard work and dedication. What we did was to strengthen academics, in terms of administration and in terms of research. When you look at the development of infrastructure in this university, you will know that it is nothing to talk about.

And since I came on board about two years ago, I have ensured that many of those rickety houses were pulled down; ram shackled structures have been pulled down and renovated. For example any body who has gone there has been impressed because it was as if Ekenwa campus had been abandoned.

Infrastructural development is one area we looked at and we have done so well. If you look at academic programmes, when I took over, the sessions were irregular. But by God's grace, by the end of this session, we will be meeting the target of having a regular session.

We plan to end this session in October-November. The kind of academic programme we have is of high standard. Our graduates are doing very well overseas and all over the world. Some of the best medical

doctors in the US are products of this university, this is another area the people who did the ranking looked at.

You were in the Entrepreneurship Award, I never knew them before but suddenly they said they wanted to make me their patron because I have been encouraging them entrepreneurship here. The reason is that it is not enough to get a degree these days.

What of if you have the degree but you cannot get a job with it. You should be able to branch out to do some other things. I have been encouraging both staff and students to develop themselves.

On staff development, the Federal Government and Tertiary Education Trust Fund have been very helpful in this area because they have been providing funds for the training of staff. So our graduate students have the opportunity to go to the best universities in the world, they get their masters and PHD then they come back.

I have been encouraging that, I even have a small internal budget apart from Tertiary Education Trust Fund. We have sent over forty persons abroad for training. The environment itself, you can see we have all green here; they also looked at that. We are doing very well environmentally.

How have you been able to curb cultism in the university?

When you keep the students busy and you give them their entitlements, they will not have time for immoral activities. I have used sports to encourage them effectively because you know I am a sports man. We have the VC's Cup; so by the time they go to school in the morning and in evening go for sports they are engaged.


That is the reason I renovated the Sports Complex to enable them to have access to sports facilities so that they can have varieties of games. That will keep them occupied. You don't expect somebody who plays sports from 6:30 to 7a.m. to go and be doing cultism.

I also ensured that the lecturers follow their time-table to the letter and they also make sure that they take attendance. And you the know that the law is very clear, if you don't have up to 75 per cent attendance, you are not supposed to do exam.

So when you don't take exam, what will you tell your parents when you get back home? One of the strategies too is that some of those who graduated have no jobs, so they become involved in cultism, they won't go to their homes any more.

But many of them, once they graduate now, those that made first class, I employ automatically. Those who don't have, we also employ them within the limits of our budget. I can confess to you that the personnel cost that I have can even still accommodate some people in terms of employment.

My offence to those people who are used to business-as-usual is that they were keeping the money and sharing it. But I refused that it will not happen again and insisted that I will use it to employ. I even threatened at a point that if they didn't want me to employ, I would return the money to the Federal Government. They agreed because they knew that returning it to the Federal Government will open a can of worms.

Commendation from Federal Government

I paid arrears to the tune of N900million when I came in as VC. I recently paid promotion arrears which were never paid too. They said there was no money then whereas the money was deposited somewhere. You see, when I took over, I was handicapped to an extent that I had no handover note.

So I could not have access to all the accounts but, with God, I started discovering them. So I started asking questions on why some accounts were not being utilized while government sent the money for a purpose. I said the money must be utilized for the benefit of the university. You can see some of the structures that we recently erected.

Those structures are not N2 structures, we have five lecture theaters of one thousand seaters each. If you go to the engineering faculty, we have another two thousand going on at the same time. I believe that when government brings money for such things, it should be utilized but the attitude of some people is that you should first of all go and keep it in a bank so that it will bring profit for you.

That is evil. So I was not surprised with the commendations I received both from the unions in the university and the Federal Government.

How I discovered inflation of salaries

When you have goodwill in a community, you get all the information you need. I sat in my office, then people will either phone or send me text message giving me information. Don't waste any information you get because it may help you a lot.

That is how I got the information that people were inflating salaries. And when I got that information, I called the former head of that department, I said, ' look I have information that people are inflating salaries.' I discovered that a driver was earning one million naira a month and then one intermediate official was collecting N3million monthly.

So I gave the department head the opportunity to investigate the matter. She did and did a wishy-washy report, she wanted to cover up some people. I said okay. I decided to set up my own committee to look into the matter. When they came back with the report, I was alarmed. Virtually all of them inflated their salaries and they were just collecting the money.

Initially they were denying because one of them had boasted to them that the fraud will be covered up. Why are you covering up if you are not party to it?. Even the panel report reflected that the department head should be held liable for that fraud.

Unfortunately, all the people that were involved in that were all her kinsmen and women. So she started saying that I wanted to drive all her kinsmen and women away. I am not the one who posted them, they were indicted by the university panel.

You are being accused of running a Bini agenda in the university after it was learnt that a Bini senator facilitated your appointment?

When they say I am running a Bini agenda in the school, I laugh because I know that it was only God that put me here as VC. Do you think that it is all the Binis that are supporting me?. That is why this ethnic thing cannot work here. Yes I heard that people were saying that a senator from the state supported me.

But that is not true, that senator had his own candidate, I was not his candidate. That is why I keep telling people that my coming here is God. The people who just left my office now are not Binis, they are Igbo, Yoruba, Ora and Esan.

And they all came for help and, many of them, it is either I have employed their wives or children and they are not Binis. That senator, with all due respect to him, he had a candidate. They selected three persons, I was not one of them.

As at that time, I knew that God was with me and none of those people could beat me to it. It is the handiwork of God, I did not know those Council people but I just applied and God gave it to me. Even when people came to my house to inform me that I was now the VC, I was shocked and said, even with all these wranglings that took place.? These people you were talking about were against me.

Again, this story that recruitments have been lopsided in favour of the Bins, there is nothing like that. You can go round and find out from all the newly employed people, how many of them are Binis? In fact one of them, an Igbo boy, told me that they may have to form an association of newly employed people so that they can go and speak to journalists on this matter.

Because that was how the sacked top official messed up; she went to Abuja and met one Director and told the man I was a tribalist, but she did not know that I had employed the man's son and this same man had never seen me in life. You see the irony of life? When she left the man, the man called me and asked if I had a problem with the official. I said I didn't. The man now

^^^The Nation is already in the Abyss. How low can our nation get my bro?

@OP do you mind posting the link to the full story? this is quite interesting.

^^^^ Here is the source http://odili.net/news/source/2012/mar/18/321.html

^^ thanks!

@OP I must say the prof get courage to embark on most of these reforms. For those familiar with the university, you appreciate the kind of opposition the man must have encountered. just hope he can sustain it.

Is the man doing a good job?Hell yeah

Is he on a Bini employment jamboree?Hell yeah

Is he on a UNIBEN ALUMNI employment jamboree?Hell yeah

More power to your elbow,Prof.