We should spend more on education than we spend on National Assembly —Dominican University VC

Dominican University, Ibadan was one of the universities the National Universities Commission granted operational licence in November 2016. It started admitting students in 2017. In this interview by MODUPE GEORGE, the pioneer vice chancellor, Very Reverend Fr Professor Anthony Akinwale, speaks about how the university was birthed, what it set out to achieve, as well as his vision as the chief executive. Excerpt:

Tell us about Dominican University

The university grew out of the Dominican Institute, which was an affiliate school of the University of Ibadan. This was from 1993 until the university got its licence in the 2016 and started admitting students in 2017. So far, we have had our third matriculation ceremony.

The Dominican University comes from the name Dominic. St. Dominic De Guzman was a Spanish priest who lived in the 12th century from 1151–1221 and he established the Dominican Order. Officially, the Dominican Order is called the Order of Preachers. It’s a religious order within the Catholic Church. Even before the Dominican University was birthed, there had been a relationship between Dominicans in Ibadan and the University of Ibadan. The idea of running tertiary education comes from the belief that faith and reason must come together; that when people try to separate faith from reason, they tend to be fanatical about religious matters and when people separate faith from reason, it’s ether they end up as atheists or agnostics. A total person is formed intellectually, technically, ethically and spiritually. You have to take care of all these dimensions of human existence if you want to form a total human being. The Dominican Order was formed to form such human beings.

What led to the idea of standing alone as a university?

When you are an affiliate school, there is a limit to what you can do; but when you have your own university, there is practically no limit to what you can do. You design your own university programmes as you see the needs of the society; you design your own university curriculum, course subject to the approval of the regulatory body for university education in Nigeria – that is the National Universities Commission. If you look at how things are in this country, you will discover that every year, maybe about two million Nigerians write the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, and out of these, maybe the universities can only take one quarter of the number. There are many young Nigerians who are now going to Benin Republic, Ghana in search of university education. Universities are the engine room for development in any society. You talk of places like Oxford, Cambridge, among others; they have gone on to produce great leaders for their countries. That’s what we want to do here.

Can you share your vision as the pioneer vice chancellor and how you plan to achieve it?

My vision is to have a university that runs a curriculum that inculcates multiple competences so that by the time someone graduates from the Dominican University, that person will be able to work for his or her good by working for the common good. I’m talking of graduates who are not only employable but are able to employ. Now, people graduate from universities, and they are looking for jobs, and it is such an irony for a country that is in need of development. We need to run a university that will be able to produce people who will be able to provide services that are so much needed for Nigeria to take its rightful place in the comity of nations.

Are there challenges you’ve identified?

The major challenge is funding. Every university in Nigeria is crying about that. But good things are not cheap. We cannot continue to delude ourselves by thinking education is free; somebody has to fund it. And if you look at the private universities in Nigeria today, we don’t get any funding from the government. When you are a vice chancellor in a private university, you are a beggar. You are to go around sourcing for funds. You get from the proprietor, no doubt, but you find out that you have to learn to fend for yourself. Nigeria has to device innovative ways of funding education. I think we should spend a lot more on education than we spend to maintain the National Assembly.

How do you intend to generate funds?

You device ways to internally generate funds, you look for benefactors and you write for grants here and there. There are things that the university can do to generate funds. For example, the university can decide to take up one sector of the industry. I am thinking that in the future, this university will be able to generate electricity, not only for its own use but also for the use of the locality. That will automatically bring down the amount spent on electricity. We have well-equipped laboratories here that can be put to use not only by our own students but even by researchers from other places and of course they are not going to use it for free. People do complain that private universities are very expensive, but actually ours is one of the lowest tuition fees in the South-West. Our tuition fee is under N200,000 because we want children of the poor to be able to come to school here and study in the serene environment.

Is there any collaboration with older universities for mentorship?

Certainly, there is mentorship going on. This university has relied largely on the University of Ibadan right from the time it was an affiliate school. In a way, you can say the University of Ibadan gave birth to the Dominican University due to that arrangement of affiliation. We have been learning from the University of Ibadan. It is not meant to be a replica of the University of Ibadan, but we have had a lot to learn from the University of Ibadan by way of running the administration and the curriculum.

You are a Catholic priest and at the same time a university administrator. How are you able to combine the two herculean tasks?

By simply applying myself to the two; I don’t see any contradiction in the two. As a matter of fact, among my intellectual mentors is a philosopher known as St Thomas Aquinas, a member of the Order of Preachers. I wrote my doctoral thesis on his writing. He was a priest and a man of the university. I have so many examples. There is St Thomas, John Henry Newman who is a priest and was saddled with the responsibility of establishing a Catholic university in an Island and in the process of doing that, John Newman wrote series of essays titled “The Idea of a University”. Reading those essays and studying the writing of Thomas Aquinas inspired me a lot, that one could be a priest and be fully involved in the academia. I went to a secondary school where the soccer referee and coach was the school principal. Today, you can’t tell the story of football in this country without the name Rev Fr Denis Slatery. He was the chairman of referees’ association at one time. He was a football coach and at the same time he was secondary school principal. I‘m talking about the founding principal of St. Finbarrs College. He was a priest. When I remember such people, I can’t say that I can’t be a priest and be involved in all these things.

We have heard different stories of immorality taking place even in faith-based universities. How are you going to handle this?

I will speak for my own university. When you say freedom, freedom is not being free to do whatever you like; that is a misconception of freedom. Freedom is freedom to do what is right. It’s when people understand freedom as freedom to do what they like that there will be trouble. There is a code of conduct here and we enforce it. Here, you cannot turn a university into a gymnasium where everybody is doing what they like. There are certain things you don’t do. Even though it is a private institution, if you want to study here, you must abide by the regulations. Here we have zero tolerance for examination malpractice. Our students are tested when they come in here to be sure they are not doing drugs. If they are doing drugs, they have to go for rehabilitation; but thank God we have not had a case like that. The code of conduct tells you that you can’t dress anyhow here, whether you are a man or you are a woman. The code of conduct tells you, there is not going to be any sexual activities on campus and there are sanctions; whether you are a student or a member of the staff. Remember what I said about education on multiple competence: intellectual, technical and ethical. We are very strong about ethical competence. If you take out the ethical competence and you just concentrate on technical and intellectual competence, you know what you will get? ‘Yahoo Boys and Girls.”