By Agatha Emeadi
Prof Folasade Tolulope Ogunsola is the first female and 13th vice chancellor of the University of Lagos.
The professor of medical microbiology is the former provost, College of Medicine of the university.
Many have described her as a woman of many firsts based on her career chronology.
In this exclusive interview with Sunday Sun, Prof Ogunsola said that her most pressing challenge as a vice chancellor is energy/electricity and the cost. She also looked at the future of the universities.
Public universities struggle to pay PHCN bills, is it not possible to generate electricity of their own?
PHCN bills are not just on the high side, but impossibly on the high side. Everything to be done to supply electricity in the university is possible, but people say it as if it is just what one can wake up and do overnight. The initial outlay for one to go to alternative energy is high. Universities are not just a storeyed building or just an office, rather a whole community. Most universities are bigger than some local governments and even European towns. So, to go for alternatives is doable, but not cheap and not a short-term substitute as such. Though we have started the process, but in the meantime, we still have to deal with the bills.
What is the disposition of the Federal Government towards funding, what are the challenges in the university?
Presently, my most pressing challenge is energy/electricity and the cost of it. Previously, we were on Band B’ and then we have to transform it. Initially, they jacked one to Band A’ and my bill went from between N150 million and N180 million to N295 million a month. Then the last month, our second transformer went to Band A, and I got a bill of N472 million to pay in one month. So, we are going to ration what we have. People may say, oh! They do not use electricity and they forget that university is a city. We have laboratories that we cannot shut down. We are paying, but cannot pay what we do not have. There is no way I would pay half a billion naira in a month, I do not have such. We are a social service who are not allowed to charge commercially. So, we cannot also be charged commercially because students do not pay the real cost of their education. So, we are subsidizing that. Even with the fee hike, it is a joke. Even if students pay N25,000 per month, it can come to probably over N2 billion and that is within six months charge. So, I do not know where they expect us to get the money. We have cried out to the government and I am sure they are looking at it. Truly, something will have to be given; it is either we do not accommodate students again because they use most of the electricity, or we may have to shut down some things because I think the electrical company thinks we have money somewhere, but we do not. So, there is no where to bring it from.
What is the government doing for the university presently?
Well, government does quite a bit. Once, they pay our salaries. We may disagree about how much and what should be paid or not, but they pay our salaries and that allows students not to pay fees. If the students have to pay for salaries of staff, they will definitely have to pay more. That is why they can subsidise, and that is the reason we can be doing small bits. What universities worldwide trade in is not much and knowledge comes from people. So, the greatest expense is coming from the human capital. That is the highest expenditure and the government does that. They help with capital projects, but universities need a lot of recurrent expenditure and that is where we are not paying net and that is everyday problem. Some help through TETFund for conferences, but it cannot do everything. But a lot of it is around infrastructure and equipment. The current expenditure like running examinations cost as much as N50 million. People do not appreciate that there is a constrain in education. A lot of things we ask students to pay, even though we put titles to them are to help run the university, but we are not getting the amount we need to run the school. People will decide sooner or later how universities will be run. Once you have a huge population, it is very hard to have free education. But it is a matter of scale, when you have less population, one can do it. But with so many people, it is difficult. In Nigeria, people below 30 years are about 159 million, between the age of 15-30 is about 89 million. Let us assume we only have 50 per cent that want to go to tertiary, it is over 40 million, that is even bigger than most countries. So, how can education be free? Education attention level is the most expensive especially in today’s world that is moving at a speed. It means one have to be constantly updating and we do not have such facilities. For us to be nimble, we need a lot of money and people. We need people who are knowledgably able. It cannot be routine; we are not civil service where you can plan to take someone next year. University does not run like that, if you find a good person you take the person immediately. We are a developing country and will get there. We are growing and will, therefore, have challenges, but we will overcome them someday.
Fresh admissions are by the corner, what is new?
We cannot do more than we can do. We cannot take more than our capacity can take. We cannot take more than the lecturers can have. We cannot take more than the classrooms can carry, so I think one of the things that will be a discussion is how to have a country who will start to see that this model for universities might be outdated. We might be moving into using technology, distance learning so people do not have to come at the same time, but come when they need to socialise. So, we might start having distance learning and start employing teachers who will not come daily. Maybe universities will be more like laboratory spaces and maker spaces. The future for universities might be more borderless nd more technology-driven because campus style is expensive to run.
What kind of university did you inherit when you came into office?
What I have found with University of Lagos is that we have been lucky. We have heard progressive vice chancellors. So, every vice chancellor has put something down that allows one to grow. We developed a 25-year strategic plan in 2014 and we are working through that strategic plan where every vice chancellor builds on what we have. We have been quite lucky; we do not have acrimony in transitions. But at the time I came in, we just inherited an eight-month strike, recovering from COVID-19, so financially we were not in a good shape, not that we were dead, but it was also the cause of the time. As we speak, we recovered a bit. So, we are looking for ways to improve, but what is happening now with light, we might go down a bit with light. We are looking for ways to improve.
Growing up, was it your original plan to be a vice chancellor because the younger female generation are looking up to you?
Never. I never planned to be a vice chancellor. I think the younger female generation should be able to plan to be. At the time while I was growing up, beyond Prof. Grace Alele-Williams, we did not have female vice chancellors as role models. So, being a vice chancellor was not on my mind. What was on my mind was how I would become more of an academic, travel to present papers and putting the things I have been working and implementing to fruition. That was my plan and I still would do it because whatever happens, one remains an academic for life.
Last year when I came into UNILAG to discover that newly admitted students were sleeping in the mosque, churches and classrooms because they had no accommodation, what is the way forward to solve accommodation problem in UNILAG?
Accommodation on campus is not something one can manufacture. It is either a student has it or not, and there is nothing anyone can do about that. Accommodation is not a given, there are some universities that do not have accommodation worldwide. Universities do not have to do accommodation personally, but UNILAG does so because that is what we model. It is not our obligation. Our obligation is to give our students education. The accommodation as much as we can, we will do; but it is not our obligation. In Lagos, because of the difficulties, we have taken it as a responsibility to try, but we can only do with what we have. Building hostels is not cheap. Right now, we are renovating the old hostels to make them more livable, though it is a very expensive venture.
Have you reached out to the Alumni Association?
To build a new hostel costs hundreds of millions of Naira. We have been talking to them. It is not cheap. In 2017, we had about five PPPs and none of them delivered. To build in UNILAG, one needs to do pilling, which is very expensive.
How healthy are Nigerian universities?
It depends on what one means by that. If one is talking in terms of training, it is improving rapidly. If one thinks we have shabby buildings, that is not what matters. There has been a lot of experiences. For now, we have 273 universities in Nigeria, I can only speak for mine and some that I know. What we have now will be great of how good they are. I think of many people who talk about universities in negative terms, they have not gone round to see what they do. Many people do not know what is going on in the university. So, I invite those who talk to come around and see what we do.
You have been in the system for years…?
Yes, I have been in the system, we do not have funding, but have done a lot of things by improving what we do with collaborations with other universities outside the country. They appreciate us more than Nigerians. The point is, it is not written anywhere, but people who make assumption think nothing is happening.
How do you want to make the students be all-rounders, besides? What else would you add to motivate students win scholarship awards?
We have done quite a lot of things. We have brought industries and have done a lot of renovation hubs. The entrepreneurship is there and we are bringing more. Sahara Energy is setting up a hub. If you go to the library, you will see new innovation there. We are also creating and bringing other groups of people. On the old bookshop, there is a café over there and the bookshop itself is being renovated to become a learning space. Why we did that is because the bookshops are not for buying books, but to communicate. We are also doing some out door places to sit around and mix and mingle to improve that experience. We also started a ‘UNILAG in town’ which also helps to bring our creativities in Theater Arts to showcase themselves to the world. The question is which one are they queuing into? We also started career supports service for students. What we expect is for the students to queue into all of these and become better people. In engineering, we have Siemens that are supporting us. All these are there and I hope the students will use them, more especially because they are free.
UNILAG and LASU are hosting the rest of Africa in FASU games, what do you want to achieve as a university?
It is a point in time and that is why we are hosting FASU? It is a fact that Nigeria has a bad rap generally, but when you bring people in to meet us, they always change their mind. So, the narrative out there is not always great, but we have found out that the moment they come to meet with Nigerians, they recognise how great the people are. Again, Africa needs to come together if they are going to thrive and what better way could we do that if not through sports. So, as we bring the young people together, it is not just about the sports and the competition, but about the unity which is so important. Now, if we are going to move forward and become a power in the world, we need that unity. Sports we know is one of those areas that bring people together. Again, it gives our students better chance to meet other people, broaden their horizon and sports is also about discipline, resilience and persistence and these are the traits needed for success in any sphere of life. So, we are always very happy to encourage our students to push their limits because if they have that spirit, they will apply it anywhere. It is a recipe for success.
How has the funding been? For the institutions to pull up such a big sporting event, huge funds should also be involved?
We do need a whole of the funds. We have had quite a lot of people sponsoring it. It has helped because we just had the Nigerian University Games Association (NUGA). Again, we are doing this with LASU. The funding is not just on UNILAG, of course, the Lagos State government is supporting. We have reached out to partners, industries, companies and a whole lot of other people to support us. Do we need more help? Yes, we do. You can know that hosting people, keeping them on campus will be a cost. However, FASU games is not for free, so all students that are participating pay a registration fee. Some of which will be given to us for housing and feeding them. Though it will not cover the cost, it will ameliorate it.