No system can sustain free education at all levels —KDU VC

Professor Adeniyi Olatunbosun, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), is the third substantive vice chancellor of KolaDaisi University (KDU), Ibadan. In this interview with MODUPE GEORGE, he speaks about the Nigerian legal system, his four years experience as a VC, achievements, among other topical issues in tertiary education.

So many challenges have been associated with the legal system of this nation, from corruption to backlogs of cases and personnel problems, among others. What is your take and what’s the way forward?

The Nigeria legal system is not completely in isolation with the general situation of the country, but by and large, there are perceived corrupt practices among the judicial personnel and those who are judicial stakeholders. Nonetheless, it is not a general application. We have judicial personnel and the stakeholders who are actually upright, knowledgeable and conscientious in their dealings and they are people of high integrity but there are few ones who are not by virtue of their own peculiarities or what they choose to be. I mean those who may want to affect the generality of the system. However, I believe that the problem is not as malignant as people portray it, because many times, whoever brings a matter before the court, would always want justice to be in his/her favour. If it is not, such a person believes that justice has actually not been discharged.

The issue is also about the functionality of our society, which has to do with the level of our civilisation and understanding of what the legal system is all about. When you go to court, especially for civil litigation, there’s a need for you to prove your case, and at the end of the day, it is the quality of the evidence you put across and what a judge believes that decides his judgment. Sometimes, one may have a good case but lacks the evidential value to substantiate the claims. I believe that as we progress as a nation, there will be an opportunity for Nigerians to appreciate the tasks of the judiciary. If we all have confidence and trust in the judiciary and we do things the right way as well as being honest and open in our dealings, the bulk of the allegations against the judiciary will considerably reduce.

 

One of the human rights is access to education, which should be the responsibility of the government. Do you believe that education should be totally free?

In this regard, human rights categorise the stages of education. We have the basic primary, secondary, and tertiary forms of education. However, I think what human rights is basically saying is that every child is entitled only to basic education because, all over the world, education is not totally free. This does not mean, even when it is made free through the government, that there will not still be other ones that will be paid for; at this point, it’s a matter of choice. We have parents who will still approach private nursery, Montessori and other forms of early childhood education because they believe that the quality of education their children deserve may not be available in government schools.   The reason why human rights advocate for free education is to give everyone the opportunity to be able to read and write. The level at which a person desires to go will now depend on the availability of such kind of education. It is a misconception on the part of those who are canvassing for free education to tertiary levels because even all over the world, the right education is to give people basic educational entitlement. What comes thereafter depends on the choice of the parents. The truth is, it is not sustainable; the government does not even have the resources. How much is the Federal Government contributing to the budget of education? It’s about seven to eight percent. So, and that is why the United Nation (UN) is stipulating that nothing less than 15 percent should be allocated to education. So, if education should be free at all levels, it would mean 100 percent and I think no system can sustain that kind of policy.

 

…but then, do you think the government is doing enough when it comes to funding education?

You see, education is on the concurrent list; both the federal government and the state government are serving the responsibility of providing for education, and so in some states, we have more people demanding for education than in some other states. This is due to the peculiarity and the configuration of the Nigerian nation. So, for those states where we have more people demanding education, the government of such states will try as much as possible to meet the needs of their people to retain legitimacy in governance and continuity in administration. Otherwise, the opponents will use that to campaign against them.

Basically, we can see that most of our state governments are trying their best to input competent and quality staff in both primary and secondary schools. Also, at the federal level, the federal government has so many federal institutions, and lots of resources are being put in place to ensure that we have a break-even by subsidising the costs to a large extent. For instance, when you talk about sciences, chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and all forms of physical, biological, and chemical sciences, you will discover that you need a lot of funds to run them.

So, in that regard, you discovered that education in the tertiary institution goes beyond just the functionality of a student-teacher relationship. There must be other things that must be put in place such as a lot of methodology in teaching coupled with equipment must be put in place to enable the learners to compete favourably with their colleagues in other climes.

 

You moved from a public institution to a private one. How has it been charting the course of KDU for over four years?

It has been very interesting, interesting in the sense that it’s obvious that private universities, as we are all aware, have become a very reliable source of access to education for the majority of our youths and also that both the federal and state governments’ institutions cannot accommodate all the prospective students due to other considerable factors. Private universities have come to stay as very valuable partners with other federal universities; there is a synergy among federal, state, and private universities because we now have a forum where we meet to compare notes in ensuring that the university is a universal institution. The shift has been very interesting and also challenging. Day by day, we are prepared to meet the needs of our students; that is our priority. Also, we think ahead and ensure that we plan for their future. Since we are not having subvention from the government, what we do depends on what the chancellor and the board of the university have provided. Even when it comes to the tuition that we get from students, we have discovered that they cannot meet the operational needs of the university, so there is still a need for interjection regularly from the proprietor and the founder. We thank God that our proprietor is actually a man who is readily available at all times to support and to back us when there are needs. He gives us the academic freedom that we need to excel and to also function without any fear of intimidation. We have the freedom that is expected in any university.

 

Recently, the number of students has immensely increased in KDU. What have you done differently?

We have a strategy set up for a five-year academic plan, and we’re trying to meet up with that. One of the major steps we took was that we increased the number of our academic programmes. When I came, there were just two faculties; the Faculty of Sciences and Faculty of Art, Management and Social Sciences. Also, as a lawyer, I ensured that we established a Faculty of Law, and two years ago we set up a Faculty of Basic Medical Sciences where we run nursing and other allied health programmes. Thus, that has given us the opportunity to expand our scope and opened the students to various options in terms of courses they would like to study. In terms of academic development, we tried as much as possible to attract senior professors. We were able to get our own permanent professor. Though retired, they are very active in the service. They have brought in their wealth of experience in terms of handling students by giving them what is required to actually get the knowledge.

We have also ensured that we subjected our young and middle manpower to competition. The basic qualification that we have is a PhD; 90 percent of our staff have PhDs; the remaining 10 percent that do not are already on it with evidence of progress reports to show that we monitor their development as well. We have also subjected our students to competition and by virtue of that, most of our students also serve as referrals for those who are coming.

We follow due process in terms of promotion and recruitment coupled with quality assurance. We monitor what our lecturers are teaching through what we call “infographic survey” whereby students will not disclose their identity and they are free to give us feedback. This way, we review from time to time and if there’s a need to draw the attention of any lecturer, we will.

 

You sounded as though there are no challenges?

Of course, there are but what we believe is that every challenge is surmountable. The challenges that we have are challenges of development, challenges of growth and advancement of the system. Initially, when the university started, we had 32 students admitted for the first set, I was not there then though. However, by the time they were having our second convocation, they were about 54. Then, we moved to 94, 134 and the last one was 156. By God’s grace the one we are going to have this year will be above 300 and by the time the current 100 level students get to the convocation stage, we will be having about 650. I tell you that has been a steady growth.

 

One of the goals of KolaDaisi University is to be a ‘world class’ university. In terms of collaborations, how many foreign staff or students have you attracted so far?

World class is an aspiration that we are working towards. It is part of our vision and mission statements and the essence of it is of many folds. One of them is that our curriculum is of international standards. For instance, we have received collaborations from some universities in Europe and they also promised us an exchange of staff. This will in turn give us the opportunity to send one or two of our staff over there. In science too, we’ve had collaborations with some universities in America and one of our staff, Dr Akanni in Mathematics is actually into science and technology and he won a scholarship, a postdoctoral fellowship, at Oxford University, he was there for three months, among others.

 

Recently you attracted a big fish from the Sahara Group, a leading privately owned power, energy gas and infrastructure conglomerate. Tell us how it happened.

We are so excited to be able to attract a prominent personality in the person of Mr Kola Adesina. Despite his tight schedule, he was able to come and deliver our first Business Administration lecture. He came to share from his wealth of experience, both the theoretical and practical aspects of it. He was so excited to come and at the end of the day, he was able to give us a promise to build for us an edifice, which is going to be a hub of entrepreneurship. I believe that will also challenge and open our students to entrepreneurship, irrespective of the course they are studying.

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