Private universities will appreciate support from TETFund, no matter how little —VC, Adeleke University

Professor Solomon Adebola, a professor of management science, is the President and Vice Chancellor of Adeleke University (AU), Ede, Osun State. In this interview by MODUPE GEORGE, he speaks about the institution, his achievements and why TETfund should allocate funds to private tertiary institutions too, among other educational issues.  

You have been charting the course of this institution for four years, how has the journey been so far?

I will say that it has not been easy but I give God the glory. When you are sitting on a hot seat like this, you experience a lot of things; the good, the bad and the ugly. You meet people from all walks of life including the students. Currently, in Adeleke University, we have a total of 4,000 students from virtually every part of the country. Here, we see every student as a raw material meant to be transformed into a finished product and holistic individual. To achieve this, we are referring to three key points – godliness, firmness and fairness. Most importantly, we expect each student in the course of their study, to have been imparted in the light of the three ‘H’s; the head, the heart and the hands. The head represents learning, which is the academic aspect; the heart speaks of holiness and devotion to God and the hand has to do with entrepreneurial skill.

Lack of fund to carry out serious academic researches worthy of producing competitive and world-class delivery has always been a limiting factor in private universities. How are you taking up the challenge in your institution?

You are right and that is where we blame the government for paucity of funds. In Adeleke University, we rely substantially on three main factors, when it comes to funding. The first is the grace of God, second is the magnanimity of our founder and pro chancellor, Dr Deji Adeleke, who had put in place the major infrastructures, including the vehicles, roads, even the generating set, among others, before we moved here. He made all the necessary provisions all by himself with no loan from anywhere or funding from the government. He gave us everything as a grant. The third factor is the proceeds we generate from the school fees. The government has not been fair to private institutions in the aspect of funding and that was why I made mention of this recently at the last meeting held by the vice chancellors of private universities. The idea of excluding private institutions by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TrustFund) is not fair at all. I believe that the fund is being generated from the tax of everyone, including mine and yours. It doesn’t matter if you are in the government service or the private sector or self employed; it is from our taxes. When it comes to sharing the money, the Government has decided in its “wisdom” to allocate the fund only to the public sector and is why we are saying that it is not fair. Look at what the fund is doing in public institutions such as, UI, UNILORIN, OAU, LAUTECH, among others, whereas, there is no provision for private universities. It is high time the government looked into this aspect of TETund.

Can we share your opinion of what the sharing formula should be?

I cannot say this is the particular ratio it should be. It is the idea of allocating funds to private universities that I am after, nothing more. There is a misconception that anyone who is establishing a private school should have enough money to run it. For instance, at Adeleke University I can categorically say that no kobo from the school fees goes back to the founder. So, on the issue of sharing formula, for instance, 40 percent can be allocated to federal institutions, 30 percent to the state schools and 20 percent to private schools, leaving the remaining 10 percent for its administrative purposes.  However, we don’t have to help the government with the sharing, it knows what to do. What the government is giving UI is not what UNILORIN is getting; it all depends on the number of students per institution. For private universities, the sharing can be based on how big the school is; no matter how small we will appreciate it.

With regards to this request, will you then say that the proliferation of private universities is justifiable considering the economic state of the nation?

In my own opinion, it is not. I was shocked when I heard recently that the government is adding another 37 soon. Truth be told, some of the best universities in the world are privately-owned. Yale and Harvard universities are privately-owned, but they receive endowments from the citizens. We don’t do that kind of thing in Nigeria. The general belief that there are many students out there and there are not enough institutions to admit them, is not an excuse for establishing more universities; not minding how to run, fund and staff them later. I would rather suggest that we consolidate the existing ones in terms of laying solid foundations for them. Most of these new schools may have to rely on poaching staff and in the long run, many of them will fall by the wayside.

The general vision of every university is to become world-class, what effort are you making to attract the desired affiliations of international students and staff to your institution?

In respect to drawing international students to AU, I will say that we are not there. We do not have very many of them right now, owing to the current state of the country in terms of security. However, we have signed different MoUs with quite a number of foreign universities such as the Cambridge University, Oxford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US, among others where our staff go to once in a year for the purpose of interface and exchange of both the students and staff. Unfortunately the issue of Boko Haram, kidnapping and insecurity in the last four to five years has hampered that arrangement negatively. So, world class to us for now means that is what we aspire to become eventually, but we aren’t there yet. However, with our mode of teaching, the curriculum, coupled with our teaching equipment for now, we can see world-class. By this, I mean that what you will find in Oxford University in terms of equipment, you will also find here. At least out of its 10 major pieces of equipment, you can find nine in AU.

Like I said, we haven’t got many of the students/staff exchange, but we are getting there soon. However, last year, we hosted Professor Adeola Mope from Purdue University, Indanapolis, US, sponsored by the Carnegei Foundation, in our Nursing Department. She spent up to three months and she imparted on us a lot. She brought along with her, books, equipment, which we didn’t pay for, but only shipped in.

What will you say have been your major achievements?

We have been able to establish a form of stability in the system. When we came on board, we met a workforce with a crack in the wall. There were some sort of camps, but we said no, that is not how to run a university system; by the grace of God we were able to unify the entire system.

In the area of academics, we have been able to establish a PG school. In February this year, the NUC came to do resource verification for 30 different programmes, both in the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Very soon, we will start our LLM and Ph.d in Law, with an additional 40 being added to the quota, moving it to 90 now, while 50 was also added to our Nursing programme making it 100. Moreover, we are starting Masters, MPhil and Ph.D programmes in Engineering soon by the grace of God. All these are happening because we have been found worthy in terms of staff and equipment.

Also, we are starting our medical school soon, with a college of medicine and pharmacy. The Council of Pharmacy was here last year to examine it and what we are waiting for is the NUC’s approval. We are also making progress in aspects of research. We got a major breakthrough during the era of Covid’19. We set up a committee headed by Dr Kolawole Oladipo to produce a vaccine for Covid’19, with results going as far as the World Health Organisation level.

Are there no challenges?

Of course, there are challenges, in terms of funding. There are some certain machines that are needed in certain areas of research, but they are not locally available, they can only be imported. Recently, the exchange rates suddenly shot up, and as a result, we have to slow down in the meantime, until everything stabilises. We are being careful not to take loans from the bank. Also, there have been challenges in the area of power supply. Power supply is not always available, considering a programme like Medical Sciences where constant power supply is required. The diesel we use to power the generating sets to completement the epileptic power supply has suddenly moved from N150 to N800 per litre about a year ago. We have to find a way to meander through it and make do with what we have. In a bid to solve this problem, we attempted solar energy and we found out that it was too expensive and not reliable; the inverter too, but we realise that has its own limitations. Another challenge is about government’s taxation. I believe that the importation of research materials should be tariff-free, but this is not so. You have to practically source for a huge amount of money to get your things at the port. That is a big challenge we are looking up to the government to resolve for us.

One of the desires of every VC is to get all the university courses accredited by the NUC. How many of your courses have been accredited already?

All of them; presently, our undergraduate programmes is about 29, out of which only one is interim. We are looking forward to that post graduate very soon; we have 43 of them presently.

Private universities, especially faith-based ones like Adeleke University, are often being criticised for their high-handedness when it comes to discipline. How do you enforce discipline in your institution?

I must say that the issue of indiscipline among the youth is as a result of the general perception of the society; for every child behaving badly, I look back and I realise that the behaviour or habit came from somewhere. It is either through peer pressure or parents/home. In most cases, it is from the parents. A large number of the children in private institutions are from broken homes or separated parents, and they are not properly catered for. When you inquire from some of them about their background, you hear responses like, “my father is in the US and my mother is in Ijebu Ode, Ogun State and she has remarried.  I am living with my uncle now.” The same goes for the men. Some of these issues create a lot of problems for us at the beginning, because this shows us the kind of background the child is coming from; the family, paternal and maternal requirements required for his/her healthy upbringing is not there. We have rules and regulations guiding our students clearly stated in our handbook. In a class of 30 students, it is possible to find one who is deviant. For instance, if you steal here, you go on one year suspension, whereas in public schools it is outright expulsion. However, in Adeleke University we are reformatory, firm and fair, yet we enforce discipline which is backed by the word of God.