A state of the campus address delivered by the Provost, Adeyemi College of Education, Prof. Olukoya Ogen to the College community and other stakeholders on Monday 02 November 2015

The College Registrar, Mr. F.E. Aderinboye

The College Bursar, Mr. G.O. Abdul

The Ag. College Librarian, Mr. R.A. Awoyemi

Members of the College Academic Board

Deans, Directors, Heads of Departments and Units

Other Members of the College Community

Invited Stakeholders

Gentlemen of the Press

Great Arbicans

Ladies and gentlemen

Last Friday, 30th October 2015 marked exactly one year that I first stood before this distinguished academic community. This was during the occasion of my formal inauguration as Provost by the immediate past Governing Council of this great institution. It is therefore with total reverence to the awesome powers of God Almighty and with utmost humility that I am standing before you today to give an account of my stewardship in the last one year. It is hoped that this interaction would enable Management fine tune new policy objectives and deliverables for the year ahead. It will also lay the foundation for Management’s actions during the last one year. Thus, in this address, I will be highlighting major challenges and achievements experienced since my assumption of office. This address is therefore a veritable way of informing and involving all stakeholders in the agenda of the coming year.

It is very rhapsodic to be destined as it were to be the very first alumnus Provost of the College, and also on its 50th anniversary. Thus, by sheer providence, I constitute the bridge linking the past, present and the future of this institution, a living symbol of the collective aspiration of the over 50,000 alumni spread across the globe, the current student population of about 15,000 and the many more yet-to-be-admitted individuals waiting to join us. While this is an achievement in itself, it is also a substantial score for every staff of this institution because my modest academic successes and laurels can neither be totally nor partially alienated from the excellent education that I received right here on this campus; a training that gave me hope, purpose and has kept me going over the years. Understandably, this institution has the right to look upon me proudly as a craftsman would regard his finished fine piece of art. My emergence as Provost is the collective achievement of all past, present and future staff of Adeyemi College of Education.

I wish to salute the founding fathers of the College and to acknowledge the great works of all past Principals/Provosts and their management teams. I particularly wish to acknowledge and place on record the outstanding contributions of the immediate past Provost, Professor Adeyemi Idowu to the massive infrastructural and intellectual uplift of this institution during the 8 years that he served. He was also instrumental to the massive injection of funds into the College from the Federal Government during his tenure.

During my inauguration address to the College community last year, I made it very clear that I was coming into office with a mind-set that is averse to mere sitting on our laurels and basking in the euphoria of past glories. I did identify the following as our major challenges; the absence of a full university status, inadequate funding; inadequate deployment of IT in governance and research; weak research base; inadequate national and international linkages; students and staff welfare issues; abandoned projects and infrastructural deficits; erratic power and water supply and irregular academic calendar, etc.

I believe in the saying that ideas rule the world. If there is anything an administrator or a leader needs, it is the flow of ideas and in this past year, I have put that to great use for the benefit of the College. Permit me to say that it has been a very rough year inundated with lots of challenges and upheavals on all sides. I cherish the core values of sincerity, modesty, humility and selflessness because positions of authority are mere opportunities to serve.

When I assumed office, our indebtedness was almost hitting the roof and funding from government was insufficient to even pay staff salary. Serious augmentation has to be made from other sources. Indeed, we could not meet our financial obligations to contractors, outsourced services especially the college private security outfit and our cleaning contractors with a combined monthly payment of almost ten million were the worst hit. The situation is still precarious and the last time this category of workers was paid was in April 2015.

Reports of external auditors for 2012, 2013 and 2014

One of the first major accomplishments of the current administration was that it succeeded in engaging a renowned firm of external auditors, Omogoroye Okin and Company to carry out an up-to-date audit of the College finances. It should be noted that this critical and statutory exercise was last carried out in 2011. The reports of the external auditors were quite detailed, comprehensive and revealing. From the reports, I was pained to learn that the College, after 50 years of its existence had its students’ data managed solely by a third party on an outsourced basis without any proprietorship right to the College. E-portal web services on student records, conduct of Post UTME, internal examinations for large education courses and the fees payment portal of the College were all outsourced and remotely managed. Apart from the issue of confidentiality and the fact that the College has no immediate control over such data, the cost of this service to the College for the years ended 31 December 2012, 2013 and 2014 according to our External Auditors amounted to about N46m, N60m and N63m respectively. Similarly, up till the end of last session, students of the College were still using Optical Mark Reader (OMR) answer sheets for examinations involving large classes. The service provider that processes the results of these examinations charges about N500 per answer script. The cost of processing these results runs into millions of naira when multiplied by the number of scripts every session. The bill recently submitted for the 2014/2015 Harmattan semester OMR examination is over N7 million.

Furthermore, it is interesting to note that up to the 2014/2015 Academic Session, students of the College paid their fees via the purchase of scratch cards at designated banks. These scratch cards were supplied by an external body. I found this method not only out-dated but also exploitative, and consequently discouraged the use of scratch cards for payments. For instance the lop-sided sharing formula between the College and the service providers is summarized in the table below:


S/N
CARD TYPE
SHARING FORMULA
1
Proceeds on sale of Internet Access Card
College - 30%
Service Provider - 70%
2
Commission on each card sold
Bank - N120
College - N140
Service Provider – N240
3
Post UTME Registration and Post UTME Result Checker
College - 50%
Service Provider - 50%
4
Admission Status
College - 30%
Service Provider 70%

The Current Liquidity Situation
The expenditure of the College is normally based on the grants received from the Federal Government and internally generated revenue. The table below for 2014 speaks for itself:
Description
Grants
Expenditure
Surplus/(Deficit)
N
N
N
Capital Items
371,152,733
531,472,309
(160,319,576)
Staff Emoluments
1,824,913,513
1,900,612,819
(75,699,306)
Pension & Gratuity
149,991,993
102,583,175
47,408,818
Overheads
65,143,097
687,440,181
(622,297,084)
Total
2,411,201,336
3,222,108,484,
(810,907,148)




Internally Generated Revenue (IGR)


568,215,050




Balance