The provost of the Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo, Dr Samuel Akintunde, speaks with BIOLUWATIFE AKINYEMI on his four years in the saddle, the college’s university status, tertiary education in Nigeria, brain drain and other issues.
As the second alumnus to have been appointed as the provost of the college, what are your achievements as your tenure is winding up?
I give thanks to God. I think it has been a period of mixed feelings. We have areas where we have done very well and there are gaps that need to be properly filled, particularly when it comes to the expectations of staff and the college’s host community. When I came on board, I set out to achieve some goals for my tenure and, by the grace of God, I can say that, to a very large extent, the goals have been achieved. We now have the Department of Political Science and the Department of Theatre Arts. We started a skill and entrepreneurship directorate where students are able to learn tailoring, bead making and baking in two years for N6,000. With the Adeyemi online TV and radio, we train students in broadcasting and advertising. We are already working on having a proper radio station in the college. We have also improved the ICT infrastructure in the college. We have a partnership with an organisation that has provided a new ICT centre for the college, where we train academic and non-academic staff in ICT, and some of them have got their Master’s degree and PhD. Today, the college can boast of more than 200 PhD holders, 50 of whom recorded the attainment within the last four years of my administration. Some staff members were sponsored to get certified in some programmes overseas. We also renovated some dilapidated hostels that had never been touched since they were built in the 60s. We tarred some roads in the college and rebuilt some old ones. So, by and large, we have done a bit in the past four years of my administration.
How did it feel contesting with a number of distinguished academics in 2018 and emerging as the provost?
I was the deputy provost at the time. I deputised Professor Olukoya Ogen, my predecessor. You go into such a competition with high spirits, believing that you will make it. At that time, the school had a number of highly qualified senior colleagues that were fit to be in that position, who also did well in the interview but I believe it took God’s grace to become the choice of the council.
President Muhammadu Buhari, in December 2021, assented to the bill that proposed the upgrade your college to a full-fledged university, as against President Jonathan’s May 2018 declaration, which was put on hold. What is delaying the take-off of the running of the institution as a university?
The process towards making Adeyemi College a university has been on for years. I met it on the ground as a student and as a staff member. The Ondo community, staff, students and the alumni have been involved in the process. My predecessor’s effort and that of some people brought about the landmark decision of President Jonathan’s pronouncement, which was unfortunately not backed by law, which made President Buhari to put the upgrade on hold. This led to the introduction of the bill to upgrade the institution by Honourable Abiola Makinde at the House of Representatives, which was passed and assented to by the president in December 2021. We had expected an implementation committee to be set up but we discovered that the gazette for the law has not been forwarded to the Federal Ministry of Education from the presidency, a situation which Honourable Makinde has started working on. I believe that very soon, the university status will be brought to fruition.
How do you feel about the college being pronounced a university in your time as the administrator?
Whatever has been divinely situated will surely manifest at the right time. When I was a student in the college, I couldn’t have believed that there would come a time that I would come there to work, in 1997, and become the provost and that it would be during my time that there would be a pronouncement upgrading the college to a university. But that is divinely done.
What does the internal revenue Adeyemi College look like?
When I came on board, the IGR was not enough to run the administration. Its meagerness was a challenge. This made us go into some things to boost the IGR. We run a partnership with a consultancy agent who holds training for students on entrepreneurship. We also get funds from part-time programmes.
What do you make of the registration of the Congress of Nigerian University Academics (CONUA) and the Nigeria Association of Medical and Dental Academics (NAMDA) by the Federal Government?
I will only say that the decision of the court should hold while negotiations continue, since the court permits ASUU (Academic Staff Union of Universities) to keep negotiating.
On the registration of CONUA/NAMDA, I am not a legal expert but I believe that anyone can challenge the decision in court. However, I am of the opinion that if there is the same set of workers in different unions talking to the government, there will be opportunity for divide and rule as they may not get what they really want. On the other hand, the two may still exist side by side and be able to do a lot together. After all, we have the NLC and the TUC and they work together to achieve common goals. But many of us would have preferred to have the academics in just one union.
Nigerians have witnessed unhealthy relationships between heads of tertiary institutions and some staff associations. How have you been able to manage COEASU and NASU in the past four years?
We have four unions in the college, namely, COEASU, SSUCOEN, NACEATON and NASU. My belief is that when dealing with unions, dialogue and openness are very important. Sometimes you have to call their attention to the budget. There are demands they will think there is a provision for in the budget. You make them look through it and be clear. You need to do certain things like seeing to their welfare to make them happy. You have to do that so that you can put a human face to your administration.
There is an alarming rate of brain drain in all sectors of the country. What would you say is the implication of this?
People leave for many reasons. They leave because they are not happy with the country and so they seek better opportunities elsewhere. I would say people are free to leave the country because there will always be people to fill the vacuums. More importantly, Nigeria needs to be put in order. People are leaving because of insecurity and unemployment. Regarding insecurity, I would say there is some calm at the moment, but I encourage the government to do more to put a stop to it. On unemployment, when people don’t get jobs in Nigeria and they do outside, the possibility is also there that when you go out, you are going to be repatriating some foreign exchange into the nation later. We need to look into our education and give it priority attention, even our in budget. When it comes to proper education, we should train students to be self-employed upon graduation and that leads us to having skills for entrepreneurship. These will deal with so many problems such that many people will have no need to leave the country.
What do you make of claims in some quarters that the upgrading of colleges of education into universities by governments aims at jettisoning NCE programmes that are expected to cater for elementary and junior school education in Nigeria?
We don’t have any federal university of education in the country. The government can upgrade one or two colleges in each geopolitical zone and just change the structure. I would advise the Federal Government to merge the NUC, NCCE and NBTE. One of the problems of education in the country is that these bodies are not working together. A country that has a national objective on education should have one body to be responsible for meeting it. All the government needs is to create units under one body that will be in charge of universities, polytechnics and colleges of education to ensure that the curriculum is unified to achieve a national goal. With this, one body will not see itself as superior to the other. There will be no need to hold on to beliefs that for a state where there is a federal university, there must be a federal polytechnic and others. The federal college of education in a geopolitical zone can serve all the colleges in the zone together. Running affiliations with universities will not be necessary and there will be unity of purpose.
Will you return to the classroom when you leave office in November?
If providence permits, I will go back to the class and teach like I always did before I became a management staff.
What would you say on the 2023 elections and what is your advice for Nigerians, especially academics like you that might work with INEC as umpires?
I pray that Nigeria will get it right. We all need to set things right in the country. And as for people criticising the government, we know they will not do better than those leaving if put in office. Who can you blame for the state of things in Nigeria today? All of us are culpable. A lot of us are not doing things right in our corners. What we need is a set of leaders that will put us right from top to bottom. On the 2023 general election, President Buhari has assured Nigerians of a free and fair election. I appeal to those that will man the election, including youths and academics, to support the plan of the Federal Government to deliver free and fair elections.
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