Still on LAUTECH

THERE is no doubt that the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso, has become a study in Nigerian educational institution anomie. In the last few years, the institution has been embroiled in a suffusion of crises that are traceable to an apparent decision of its two owner-states, Oyo and Osun, to fiddle with its survival. The outcome of this neglect is perennial academic staff strikes, student protests and a general disruption of peace on the campus. Only last year, the institution was subsumed in an academic strike that had students staying at home for months.

This necessitated a protest march to the office of one of the governors and the embarrassing interface eventually went viral. This forced a hurried détente between the two governments controlling the institution and the students and an agreement to make N500 million available by each governor to fund the institution. But the staff had hardly resumed operations when they embarked on another strike, predicating their action on the failure of the two owner states to fulfill their promises. The staff are currently being owed several months of salaries.  There is thus a general atmosphere of disillusionment surrounding LAUTECH.

Angered by the systemic neglect of its fate, students of the institution recently stopped the school from being used for the Federal Government-organised Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). While many of the students of the school have had their academic course either truncated or fractured, there is a reported exodus of staff from the university. Only recently, it was reported that a mass resignation of specialists had hit its Teaching Hospital. About 150 officials, including 100 nurses, 20 consultants, 10 laboratory scientists, five physiotherapists, six pharmacists and some resident doctors and ward orderlies are said to have indicated their readiness to exit  the university. The institution’s workforce is terribly demoralised on account of the non-payment of wages and it has become the butt of jokes among Nigerian institutions.

Parents whose children have become social pests due to their long stay at home are also crestfallen that a university established by the military government in 1987, nurtured to become great and which indeed, for two consecutive seasons (2003 and 2004), was adjudged by the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC) as the best state university in Nigeria, could come to this sorry pass where the owner governments treat it as a needless distraction. The situation is so bad that many are advocating that the two owner states should cede its ownership to the Federal Government or that the Federal Government should forcefully take it over in the interest of the students’ future. President of its Alumni Association, Mr. Jide Bewaji, had indeed advocated that if the financial challenges bedeviling the institution persisted, the Federal Government should take it over.

Addressing a press conference on the crisis rocking the institution, Bewaji urged the owner states to ensure that it did not die by fulfilling their monthly financial obligations to it. “If Osun and Oyo cannot fulfill their monthly financial obligations 100 per cent, they should make it 50 per cent, which would be consistent. We are appealing to the Visitors to the institution not to allow LAUTECH to die. In case this perennial financial challenge persists, we want the Federal Government to take it over,” Bewaji remarked. The hopelessness of the LAUTECH situation was further fuelled by the statement credited to the governor of Osun State, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, that his state had no money to fund the school. The question is, if an owner state could express this hopelessness on the future of the institution, does it not point to an urgent need for a lasting solution by stakeholders?

Between 1987 when Adetunji Olurin, the then Military Governor of Oyo State conceived the idea of the school and October 1989 when an Inter-ministerial Committee was set up by Colonel Sasaenia Oresanya who took over from him which led to the establishment of the university, the founders of the school dreamt of a university that was to be the apex technology school in the country. However, political conflicts between the two owner states have threatened to destroy this dream. This became palpable after Osun State founded its own university. Between ex-Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala of Oyo State and ex-Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola of Osun State, political interests destroyed the innocence of the university. Today, even though the crises in the university cannot be solely laid at the feet of political disagreements, its major problem is a lack of interest in its welfare and development by one, or even both, owner states. Several committees have been set up, including the recent one led by Chief Wole Olanipekun, but the apparent lackadaisical attitude of the governments of the two states has made a solution very distant.

Stakeholders must find a way of impressing it on the two states to come to a mutual agreement on ownership so that the school can move forward. The Federal Government too should take more than a passing interest in the survival of LAUTECH. It is a shame that both states cannot continue to jointly fund the university. Passing the buck while the university sinks daily into the abyss is a sure road to disaster.