In two years, Prof Okolo re-launches Nigeria’s premier institution to global reckoning
From CHIDI NNADI, Enugu
nk4caleb@yahoo.com
Saturday, July 30, 2011


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When two years ago, Prof Bartho Okolo mounted the saddle as the new vice chancellor of the prestigious University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), he did set a new vision and mission for himself and the institution. Being an insider and one who has been putting on the UNN’s shoe, he knew what the institution wanted.
The idea to establish the institution was mooted in 1955 when a law to establish a university in the Eastern Nigeria was passed. But the university was formally opened on October 7, 1960, as one of the landmark events to mark Nigeria’s independence with Her Royal Highness, the Princess Alexandra of Kent, who represented Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth 11 performing the opening ceremony and laying the foundation stone of one of the university’s early buildings.
One of the founding fathers of the university, the late Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, had then wished that the institution would grow to have the best in academics and infrastructure on the African continent. And, indeed, the university took off in that light until in the early 90s when it started to degenerate and was littered with abandoned projects.
But when Prof Chinedu Nebo became the vice chancellor, in 2004, he set the stage to reclaim the lost glory of the university, a stage Prof Okolo sharpened and launched effectively. To re-launch the university to its prime position on the continent, as well as make it rank top globally, Prof Okolo set, as his vision statement: “To create a functional, global competitive and research focused University of Nigeria, which is not just an ivory tower, but also responsive to the needs of society while delivering world-class education and knowledge.”
In his mission statement, he also vowed: “To place University of Nigeria in the forefront of research and development, innovation, knowledge transfer and human resource development in global academic terrain, while promoting the core values which will ensure the restoration of the dignity of man.”
Thus when the administration of Prof Okolo turned two years on June 9, Saturday Sun went to the premier university to gauge the extent he had delivered on his pledge.
From the main gate of the university, it became obvious that things have changed for the better in UNN. The environment has returned to the serene state it used to be, sparkling with greenish landscape and well planned walkways.
Part of the projects visited, the workers were seen on site making frantic efforts to deliver on their completion deadline.
And, indeed, the students and members of staff of the institution, who spoke with Saturday Sun were unanimous in their verdict that Prof Okolo has delivered in all fronts.

The students
For Ekene Osuji, a final year student of Department of Psychology, the change in the university in the last two years is one that is making him to have a feeling of nostalgia already.
Hear him: “With the change I have seen in the university, I feel like not leaving again because I would like to stay around to savour more the ambient environment, but unfortunately, I have to graduate.
“The hostels are wonderful now; it wasn’t like this two, three years ago, I lived in the hostels in my first year and it wasn’t like this, but now they have renovated the whole place; the toilet ends are now okay; the rooms furnished and windows now changed to Almaco. There are a lot of changes; students are thanking the new VC for a work well done.”
Osuji also told Saturday Sun that there were great “changes in our library, which we have not seen before; they have re-designed everywhere in such a way that the library is now conducive for the students,” adding, “the new administration has done very well in the area of making sure students have facilities that would help them upgrade their knowledge base.”
Also, Emerisia Aniobi, a final year student of Public Administration and Local Government, corroborated what her schoolmate, Osuji. She said there have been major changes in the renovation of the hostels, physical facilities in terms of flowers, water and equipping the library.
According to her, the university was quite fine when she came in, in her first year, “but as time goes on there were many renovations and innovations, particularly in the last two years when this new VC came in.”

The Deputy VC
A more detailed account of the gains of the university in the last two years came from the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Academic, Prof Isaac U. Asusu, who told Saturday Sun that so much has happened in the last two years.
He said: “Before the inception of this administration, there was general apathy, in terms of academic work. I mean research and teaching, because of things that had happened in the past. But just before the inception of this administration, Prof Chinedu Nebo did a lot, and this new administration has built on what he started and done more in terms of academics.
“Since two years, we have sent out a good number of our staff for training and development; a good number has gone for PhD work in different parts of the world and a good number has also gone for short training, six months and so on and it has been a yearly thing now for people to go and come back and in that sense we have really injected much into our academics.
“We have also gone into collaborations with a good number of high-caliber institutions abroad; we have over 20 to 25 collaborations in the past two years with universities in the United States, Britain, Asia; their staff will be coming and our own staff will also be visiting them and we believe that as we rub ideas, it will help us to improve on what we have here.”
He also disclosed that before Prof Okolo came into office, Internet service in the university was a difficult thing, “but when we came in, we had to invite Google International and they came and worked out with us a kind of ICT facility that we want and today, I make bold to tell you that we have one of the best ICT facility in any of the universities in the country.”
Asked why they were investing in ICT, he said: “We have started the provision of wireless Internet and you can now browse wherever you are because we believe that staff and students should be able to get information online; now you can access the library outside here and without that kind of facility academic cannot prosper.”

Prof Asusu also said they have make giant strides in other areas, as their classrooms are now being digitalized.
His words: “In the past, it was not like that; we are changing the seats, refurbishing the labs and digitalising the classrooms; we have whiteboards in some places, electronic boards for teaching. Right now, if you go to the General Studies (GS) you will see the kind of work going on there, the whole place is being refurbished, all the seats have been removed, we have scratch-free seats being installed, all the floors tiled so that the place will look like a school. If you also look at our environment, you will see that there are a lot of changes because we believe that when people are in the right environment then studying wouldn’t be a burden; you can see modern footpaths, flowers and tiling of floors just to make sure we give people a good enabling environment to stay and study.”
Asked to compare the University of Nigeria with others in the world, he said; “We still have a long way to go anyway, when you talk of comparing ourselves with other universities in the world, but we have gone far. However, we are not comparing ourselves with universities in Nigeria anymore; we are comparing ourselves with universities outside Nigeria. And part of these collaborations we have with them will bring a lot of changes to us, we have gone far really.”
According to the DVC, the new initiatives were borne out of the resolve of the Prof Okolo-led administration to ensure that graduates from UNN compete favourably with their peers anywhere in the world.
“Definitely, these things are being done for them because we know that with the provision of these facilities the quality of our graduates will definitely improve and we are beginning to see it in the number of first class honours we are beginning to get and I want to let you know that since the inception of this administration, certificates are given to students at their graduation day, that was stopped many years ago, but under this administration as you graduate, your certificate is handed over to you and this has helped our graduates a lot because a lot of them in the past had graduated without certificates, they went out with Statement of Results and it has caused them a lot of problems, some have lost their jobs, others thrown out because after some time the employer will say that this man that is always showing us Statement of Result, where is your certificate?”
However, Asusu disclosed that in re-building the university their major challenge has been paucity of fund.
“There is always paucity of fund to take care of our needs, particularly lecturers who want to go for conferences outside the country because we believe that conferences are very important because conferences are where you rub minds with your colleagues and you come back with a lot of knowledge; so, we need money to support our staff to attend international conferences, though we are doing so much in that area, I think more can still be done,” he said.

The librarian
Giving an insight into the university library touted to be the biggest in the sub-Saharan Africa, Dr. Mike Okwuchukwu Okoye, deputy university librarian, told Saturday Sun that a lot had been done in the library in the last two years.
Hear him: “Apart from the building, which you are seeing, we have got new shelves, new chairs and we have a new librarian, Mr. Mogwu, who is a digital librarian to the core. This library is a model; so many of us here not computer literate before are now computer literate and some of us who have not been attending conferences are now attending conferences.

He said: “In fact, about two years ago when there was this Nigerian Library Association (NLA) conference, out of about 12 papers presented, this library took six and left only six for the other libraries in the country, that was a conference that was attended by all universities’ librarians in the country, including all the polytechnics, all the colleges of education and last year out of about 13 papers presented people from here took five and this year again we have just came back from the conference; and out of about 39 papers presented, UNN took about 16; so you can see the progress from nowhere to somewhere.
“In terms of facilities, we now have computers; we have a computer library, which was not there before; it was established around August last year and some staff of Chevron, who are ‘lions’ and ‘lionesses,’ gave us 100 pieces of computers. Out of that, we took 50 to start the computer lab and sent 40 pieces to our Enugu Campus. And the Vice Chancellor, Prof Bartho Okolo, has promised another 2,000 computers and we have mapped out a place at the topmost floor of this building we will have our visual library section.”
Okoye believes the digitalised library has helped the UNN students tremendously, as they now come to the library to browse free of charge, saying that it was a good effort to boost the university academic venture as the use of only books are no longer in vogue in tertiary institutions. He pointed out that students now get information direct from the Internet to write their term papers, thesis and dissertations.
He said: “It may please you to know that we are using a gigantic generator here to augment whatever we are getting from the PHCN in power supply and this library has been connected to the national grid. So, we are not afraid of any electricity problem because whenever the PHCN fluctuates, we put on the generator and with the 24 hours supply of light we are going to render 24-hour service in this library soon; so that students will have no complaint to make anymore. We are quite aware that some students like reading at nights; so this place will be made comfortable for them to read. In fact, efforts are being made for us to run three shifts here in the library; some staff will come in the morning, another set in the afternoon and another at night.
“The impact of the new library is much on the students and staff. Right now, we have established what we call consultancy services; each librarian is a consultant to one faculty. By this, we go to the staff in different departments and get their research areas and come here and go to the Internet and access all the materials, the documents, titles relevant to that research interest of the scholar and send it back to the staff, So, they do not have cause to say I don’t have materials to work on because we provide them with more than they need and that is done for all the lecturers.
“As for the students, as you came in you could see the students at the porters’ point there searching items on the Internet free of charge; those who do not know how to search, the librarians teach them. In fact, the last crop of students who came in were taught by our staff; we allow them to do their browsing there and with their pen and paper they write down whatever they like. It is on for now till 10 o’clock when the library closes.”

He said that the two years of Prof Okolo at UNN has been fantastic, pointing out that he has done a lot in the library, particularly in the area of its environment. “If you happen to come here in the evening, you would love to stay here overnight; you can see the water spring over there; in fact, students stay there to take photographs, especially during the convocations and matriculations. The VC has done quite a lot in beautifying the place and strengthened some people to travel overseas to do their research work. He usually tells us that he would want to make this place look like his university abroad where he read his PhD and he is actually doing that by renovating everywhere,” the deputy librarian said.

Institute of education
Another area, where the Okolo administration has excelled in the university is the Institute of Education. A senior lecturer and acting director of Institute, Dr Kamaru Usman, told Saturday Sun that the administration has done so well in the area of upgrading the institution.
Usman said: “We have two buildings, one newly constructed about four years ago by the Sandwich students with the support of the university; but this particular building here has been in existence for many years. We were before at the former MRS before we moved here, but this particular building was decked, it was not roofed, it was this administration that roofed it.

Then most of our doors that were becoming so bad were changed, including the windows. In terms of academic activities, we are holding our conference annually since the inception of this administration; we have executed a lot of grants and making a lot of contacts with external bodies. Of recent, we had an MoU signed by the university, we are part of the MoU with the Kentucky University, USA. We also had a visitor from one of the frontline universities in Britain who came to talk about forming an alliance with our Institute and we have had some programmes on gender and childhood education.”
He agreed that the new VC has brought great relief to the citadel of learning, as he pointed out: “People say seeing is believing; at times people address you the way you dress, even when you don’t have anything your outlook matters; the outlook of the university has really promoted our image.
“I wouldn’t lie; the man has really tried, except that the money is not flowing as it used to be; the money is not coming, but every other thing, discipline-wise, things are getting better; in academic, we are at good standard. Recently, we are listed third in Africa; so academically we are making progress.”
Also a lecturer at the Department of Mass Communication, Dr. Greg Ezea, told Saturday Sun that his department got a face-lift from the administration of Okolo, as their building was re-roofed and the floors tiled with marbles.
Ezea said that the department was also given a digital TV for its studio and a 30 kva generator to ensure regular power supply.
Besides, he said that Okolo approved a PhD programme for the department and recruited eminent professors to run the programme.

Projects and municipal services
Saturday Sun also spoke with the man on whose shoulders rested the numerous renovation going on in the university, Dr. Anene Moneke, a senior special assistant to the VC on projects and municipal services, who summed up that the institution has become a one huge construction yard.
He said: “There are actually many projects going on here and most of the projects we are doing currently are the ones we are doing with internally-generated revenue. We have other projects, like the ETF project, which is a special and normal intervention, but what we have been trying to do is to use internally-generated revenue to start doing things in modules because everything we are doing is part of the general picture to create a positive learning environment. And we believe that because of the competitive demand on the available scarce resources we have to prioritise; but whatever you do let it be the general picture or goal of what you want to achieve.
“We know that without the students being here, we won’t be here, the students are the reason we are here; so, first of all, we want to recreate the learning environment to assist them achieve their goals in life and that was why we started with the hostels.

You can see that the hostels for a very long time were not touched; so we started by re-doing the toilet ends, after that we changed the windows, most of them were broken and all the roofs were leaking and we are also doing the landscaping of the hostel areas and when we finish we will paint. We are digitalising the classrooms; if you go to the GS, we have finished tiling all the classrooms, we have two big theatres we want to rehabilitate, we have restored the seats in the classrooms, and all the classrooms will now get smart boards for teaching. There are a lot of things still going on; I see the place as a worksite, maybe in the next one year everything will start coming out because there are so many things going on at the same time.

“I must also say that it is, one, to have vision, two, being determined to drive your vision to fruition; I think that is actually what is propelling the vice chancellor; at times he doesn’t take no for an answer, he believes definitely that as you are trying to achieve your goal you are going to come across a lot of problems, but you should think about the solutions.

“We have had challenges, but once these challenges come up we are thinking about the solutions to move ahead. Like in the water and energy problems, they are now part of the routine because now I know that if the light goes off for five minutes everybody starts to call me, but before now for weeks running nobody will complain; it is a major determination of the administration to make sure that water and electricity, that is, municipal services are available at any time. We are not there yet, but we have made a lot of progress, trying to make sure that water and light are available 24\7.”

Moneke also said that the International Scholar Village being constructed would help them quarter scholars, who would come to the university to help build its academic content.
“Nobody grows in isolation; it is when you go out that you know exactly what other people are doing and most times try to imbibe the positive things they are doing. And the VC thinks that there is no way we can say that we are world-class university without having strategic alliances with other world-class universities all over the world.

He has been to a lot of places and we have entered into MoUs with these people and, of course, when these people come here they need a place to stay and we also know the kind of accommodation they offer us when we go there. So, he also decided that there is need for us to develop an area where we will put accommodation for these people who will come here to help develop our curriculum and academic content; that is what informed the development of the International Scholar Village,” he disclosed.

Before they came in two years ago, Moneke said that obviously the university was no longer an academic environment, as it was more like a commercial environment, having shanties here and there to the extent that some people were trading in the classrooms and offices.

“But right now, all the illegal structures, once we get to a place we want to develop, we remove the illegal structure; we are trying to recreate the vision of the founding fathers of the institution. Now, if you are driving through the campus, you will see people using the pedestrian walkways, before people didn’t know what pedestrian walkways are, but now they use them happily. In the next three years, here will never be the same again; people will be able to see what we have been able to do with the little resources at our disposal,” he promised.

Enugu Campus
The feat recorded by Prof Okolo was not only in the Nsukka campus of the university, as his secretary and communication manager, Mr. Gab Ndu, told Saturday Sun that he had equally achieved the same feat in the Enugu campus, where many projects are also ongoing.
According to Ndu, Okolo recently, in company of some principal officers of the university, the VC took an inspection tour of some ongoing projects at the Enugu campus.

Some of the projects inspected, he said, include, the Centre of Excellence for Business Studies, which will provide accommodation for postgraduate studies in business studies in the university, including Economics, Finance, Accountancy and Business Management. He said that the complex also includes a four-star hotel, which will provide accommodation for students that are expected to come from across the globe. The building sponsored by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is expected to be completed in a few months time.

The other project visited by the team, he added, include the Centre for Environmental Management and Control (CEMAC) sponsored by the Shell Petroleum Development Company expected to be an international centre for research, training, teaching and consultancy on environmental matters.
Not done, after the inspection tour, he said that Okolo and his team retired to the Moot Court for a critique session on the design for the proposed new medical centre for the Enugu Campus.

He disclosed that the VC said the proposed medical centre would be a 120-bed hospital that would take care of the health needs of the students, staff and community neighbours, adding that the centre was one of the transformational projects aimed at making UNN a 21st Century institution.

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2011/july/30/national-30-07-2011-12.html

My alma mater! I'm so proud of you. I've always wondered why Nebo[i]uchadnezzar[/i] was ever made a UNN VC

[size=17pt]is he that bad?[/size]

Odunnu: My alma mater! I'm so proud of you. I've always wondered why Nebo[i]uchadnezzar[/i] was ever made a UNN VC