Now that LAUTECH has resumed

After almost a year under lock and key, the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) has resumed academic activities.

Within few weeks of resumption, life has fully returned to the school and Ogbomoso city is feeling this already. The two owner states should be commended for redeeming their promise to reopen the university by releasing substantial amounts of money to pay the salaries and emolument of workers.

Aside the two owners state governments, media houses, LAUTECH alumni, well wishers and the people of Ogbomoso, where the school is domiciled, deserve kudos for their prayers and appeals to the government to reopen the school.

One is happy that the school has been opened. However, certain facts are deducible from the crisis.

Firstly, LAUTECH is an orphan. This is so because the two owner states have established their own universities. The implication is that LAUTECH can be abandoned, which means that the management must look for means of sustaining the school.

One of the ways to make the school self-sustaining is by increasing the school fees. In doing this, the management has to bear in mind that the school was not established for profit but to provide opportunity for school leavers in Oyo and Osun states to acquire higher education at an affordable cost.

Any attempt to introduce outrageous fees may be resisted by the people, bearing in mind the nonpayment of salaries of civil servants and the economy hardship in the country.

Another means of generating revenue for the school is that the lecturers, both doctors and professors, should explore international opportunities. By this, I mean they should be internationally recognised to enhance and facilitate memoranda of understanding on partnerships with universities abroad.

The university may set up a strategic committee to foster partnership with private concerns to get funds to develop the institution. Unless this is done, the stability of the school would depended on the whims and caprices of the government of the owner states and this would be detrimental to its well being.

Adewuyi Adegbite, [email protected].