The global president of the Alumni association of the Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, Ondo State, Dr Olumide Olugbemi-Gabriel, is a lecturer at the Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD). In this interview with ‘YOMI AYELESO, he speaks on the activities of the association and how to improve the nation’s education sector among other issues.
As the newly elected national president of the alumni association of the Adekunle Ajasin University Akungba Akoko, what should members expect from your administration?
I would have to start from how I emerged as the President in the first place. I was not interested at that point in seeking any office within the national or global alumni body. But because of the issues that the last administration had in terms of mismanagement of funds, serious allegations of dereliction of duty, division within the association, among others, I feel I could come in.
Have you been able to investigate these allegations against the previous administration or have they been laid to rest?
They have not been laid to rest. There are efforts underway to put them in a proper contest. Why we didn’t pursue it vigorously as we should was because of the fact that we felt strongly that it was going to bog us down if we spend the first moments when inaugurated to focus on that. We decided to stay away from that drama and come back to it later if we are given another mandate because of the fact that it could have slowed us down. One of the things that we noticed while the crisis was on was the last administration, the former president used the constitution in a way that favoured him and we decided that one of the most important things we must do is to bridge the gap in the constitution. We should eliminate as much as possible the noticeable gap and as a result of that, in the first year, we started a constitutional amendment process. We got eggheads who are alumni, all of them with Ph.D in law and lecturers in law in the faculty of law of the university to amend the constitution as the constitution amendment committee. They got inputs from everywhere, I also submitted and all of these demands were presented to the national executive committee which ratified, approved, made adjustment and sent it to council. The national council also did its own job before it was taken to the general assembly, which is the organ empowered by the constitution to amend the constitution. So as a result of that process, we now have Adekunle Ajasin University Akungba Akoko Alumni Association Constitution of 2023, which is now in effect.
So that was the first thing we had to do. We have blocked the gap that was exploited by the past administration, there is no administration that will come, even after ours, that would have a gap to exploit. Even if they have a gap to exploit, the people who will be in charge later will also need to find a way to block that gap.
So they didn’t see the constitutional amendment process as something that was important as an achievement. As a result, immediately we started a fundraising effort for the alumni project because we realised that the revenue is coming from annual dues, to complete that project, we may need close to about N150,000,000 million to complete that project and the whole turnover, the whole budget of the alumni association in a year is about N40,000,000. So we realized that when we removed overhead cost and some statutory spending, what will be left will not finish the alumni project in fifteen years if we are going to go by that.So, our administration instituted an alumni fundraising effort from every alumnus that we can find anywhere. I led from the front, I made the first donation into that account and then members of my executive also did.
What have been the responses from members of the alumni association to the hostel project?
The response has not been as expected but we have achieved. Reasonably, we have achieved some things that we can be proud of. Like the Vice Chancellor, Professor Olugbenga Ige, said at the meeting we had with him recently, if less than 100 alumni can raise about N5,000,000 for the alumni hostel project, it means that if we can reach out to 10,000 alumni of the university, we’ll raise about N100,000,000 or more that will complete that project. The project is our priority, there’s no other priority that we have other than the project. In fact, in the constitutional amendment that we did, we put it there that no administration must start another project until that project is completed because what happened in the last administration was that the moment the man who conceived the alumni hostel project left, who was the first president of the alumni station, the man who took over from him, abandoned the project, which was the major project of the association which nobody should have abandoned. He returned to site because of the uproar and the noise being made after he had collected money for iron rod, granite, for so many things that were not delivered to the site. Two weeks to the end of his tenure, he went back to site and the shady job that he did collapsed. They did half deck, and the half deck collapsed three months after. I had to remove the deck and start all over.
What has been the role of the alumni association under your leadership towards ensuring a better learning environment for the students in the institution?
The Alumni association is not the same thing as the Student Union Government. There’s a remarkable difference between the two. Student union government’s job is to cater for the welfare of students. The job of the alumni is to bridge infrastructural gaps on campus and to protect the welfare of its members. Students of Adekunle Ajasin University are not members of the alumni association. However, because they are going to transit at some point into alumni, we must also watch out for them. And that’s the essence of the alumni hostel project, which is going to be a subsidized accommodation on campus for students. We saw that there’s a huge gap in housing, there’s a deficit of accommodation on campus. In AAUA, we have just two government-owned hostels, both for females. Then later, there’s a need assessment hostel that was built, through the struggle of ASUU. The Needs assessment hostel is almost adjacent to the university health centre. One of the challenges in the university is the fact that 90 percent of our students live off campus where they become exposed to all sorts of dangers. If you see the condition of living, if you see some of the so-called hostel facilities or accommodation facilities outside the campus, you will pity those students; nobody should live under those conditions. Landlords and indigenous of the community, many of them are taking advantage and exploiting the gap in terms of accommodation.
What are your plans to make the association more relevant and acceptable to more graduates of the university?
All graduates of the university who call themselves alumni are supposed to pay the annual due till they die. That is the way the alumni association will be self-sufficient, have enough money to meet the needs of all its members. You will have to go through the branch if you want to be a financial member, that’s what the constitution stipulates. Right now, we have about seven branches. We have Akure, Akungba, Abuja, Owo, Lagos, Ekiti and Oyo branches. Then, we have two branches in the diaspora. We have the UK and the US-Canada branches. We are planning to increase the branches this year, there is going to be Osogbo branch, Ondo branch, Okitipupa branch because in Ondo and Okitipupa, we are going to leverage on the fact that we have university campuses there where our members are staff; that will be the foundation for other people who live within those two cities to join the alumni association.
As a stakeholder in the sector, what will be your advice to the Ondo state government on the need to increase funding for the university and others?
We know that as the proprietors of these universities, the government has a lot to do in terms of critical funding for the university but the truth of the matter is that we cannot leave the funding of any university in this 21st century to the government. Everybody must play their role, the government, parents, university management in terms of probity, accountability and management of funds released to them because corruption is also another issue. The funding that they get, how do they spend it? Then the alumni association must fill critical gaps in this university. In our own case, we have been doing that since inception.
What can be done to improve university education and make our graduates more employable and acceptable in the labour market?
There are quite a lot of things that we must do but we need to make our universities or tertiary institutions competitive. One of the ways that we must do that is to provide the necessary funding; funding is critical. You cannot run a 21st century university without adequate funding. You need electricity and internet services 24 hours, you need a functional library, you need to provide accommodation for the students, a conducive learning environment, both within the classroom and outside the classroom. Without funding, we’ll not be able to compete. The next thing is that we must be innovative, we must be futuristic in the kind of courses that we introduce into the university.
We must phase out some courses and programmes because they are outdated, they are no longer needed. If we are not innovative and futuristic, we are going to be left behind and that is why I’m happy with what recently happened that some new courses were approved for AAUA, which are Data Science, Software Engineering, among others. If we don’t introduce some of these courses, we’ll not be able to compete because the coming of Artificial Intelligence is going to challenge knowledge, it’s going to democratise knowledge, it’s going to democratise even certificates. The next world that is coming is a world where people may not even go to the four walls to earn degrees. They will stay in their house without coming to any university physically and ear a degree, it’s already happening in India where you can stay in your house and earn degrees. So we must be futuristic and we must be innovative so that the certificates that you have, the knowledge that you have, the skills that you have as a graduate will be sellable in the labour market. If you have a skill that is not sellable, nobody will buy it from you. If you are carrying around what nobody wants, you will become useless and you’ll be frustrated. The universities too must put on their thinking cap in making sure that they equip their graduates with the necessary skills but everyone of us as individuals, including graduates, must go the extra mile to gain additional skills. So parents must play their role and every one of us must play our role. We must not leave it to the government.
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