…Says ‘I’d no plans at any time to impose a successor’
By Enyeribe Ejiogu
In less than 24 hours, Prof Okechukwu Charles Esimone, the sixth substantive vice chancellor of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State, will handover to the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Administration), Prof Joseph Ikechebelu, who will hold the fort pending the appointment of the next substantive vice chancellor.
The ceremony which will take place in the Council Chamber of the university would, fittingly, be preceded by a thanksgiving service at the Deeper Life Church, Awka, later today.
These two last activities of Prof Esimone are joint testaments to the end of his meritorious tenure as vice chancellor, widely believed to have produced enormous progress in Unizik.
In the runup to the handover, an atmosphere of peace, joy, jubilation and excitement has pervaded the Unizik campus.
For two days, Thursday and Friday, academic and non-academic staff, as well as the student population reveled in joy and conviviality of the 2024 convocation held on May 30 and 31.
However, as the Unizik community was getting ready for the commencement of activities leading to the convocation and end-of-tenure of Prof Esimone, spurious anonymous petitions against him surfaced online via the social media, alleging that he wanted to impose a successor, claiming that the move had caused “tension within the university.”
This was after an earlier petition sent to the Minister of Education, Prof Tahir Mamman, had failed to gain traction and elicit support.
In a valedictory interview with Sunday Sun, Esimone laughed off the the gambit of the social media agitators, describing them as “desperate individuals” while strongly dismissing the false allegation as a disingenuous attempt to prey on the ignorance of the innocent members of the public who are not privy to the laid down rules and procedure for the appointment of the next substantive vice chancellor, a sole responsibility of the Governing Council, which until recently has not even been appointed by the Federal Government.
Inauguration of the newly appointed Governing Council has been postponed by the Federal Government to mid-June.
He told Sunday Sun that there was absolutely no plan by him to impose a VC on the institution.
Now that the Federal Government has reconstituted the Governing Council, Esimone explained that the Council would take up the issue of appointing a new vice chancellor as its first order of business after inauguration.
In this interview, he explained the procedure for appointing the next VC of Unizik, and also highlighted some of the achievements recorded under his tenure. Excerpts:
Nnamdi Azikiwe University is going through a leadership transition process as your tenure draws to a meritorious end. However, there are allegations and hints that you want to impose your successor. What is the true position?
Nnamdi Azikiwe University is a federal, public university that has laid down rules, regulations and processes that are clearly approved to guide its operations. It is not a private entity and you cannot just wake up one morning and say you want to impose a vice chancellor on the institution. It is not a private or family business where you can impose someone. Moreover, in my nature and character as a person, I cannot do that. First and foremost, I had no plans at any time to impose a successor. The allegations were completely false. There was no such plan, and secondly, the university environment has been very peaceful. Some people were just peddling these lies. And it is not only here, it is a common thing that in every university or polytechnic, whenever there is a transition, usually you would have one or two people who are interested in the seat of the chief executive of the university or polytechnic. Then they will begin to send false information, to deceive unwary members of the public, to create agitation in support of their ambition. People raise such alarms, claiming that the vice chancellor wants to do this or that, and create a false impression of conflict, infighting and disorder. It happens all the time when there is a leadership transition in universities or polytechnics. I don’t know why the leadership transition of Unizik attracted a lot of public attention. Instead of tension and disorder, you find that everywhere is very peaceful. What has happened is that some people put out false information on social media that there was tension in Unizik. I read those things the same way you did, but there is no sense of tension anywhere, and we are simply going through my end-of-tenure programme of activities. There is jubilation everywhere. All along we have been waiting for the Federal Government to appoint the Governing Council. That is why we have not proceeded with advertisement to fill the position of vice chancellor. But now the Governing Council has been constituted and will be inaugurated within a few days. Immediately after inauguration, the Governing Council will then do its duty of appointing the next vice chancellor of Unizik. And there is a procedure. The outgoing VC does not appoint his successor. First, the Governing Council publishes advertisements in reputable national newspapers inviting applications from suitably qualified candidates. Then candidates are screened and shortlisted based on guidelines and criteria. The shortlisted candidates are then interviewed by the Council. The vice chancellor has little or no role to play in the process. What you find is that innocent members of the public who are not privy to the rules of the process are disingenuously swept up into an agitation by desperate individuals with interest in the seat. The whole process is handled by the Governing Council, not the vice chancellor. This was why during a sitting of the University Senate I had to read to the hearing of the Senate one of the petitions written to the Federal Minister of Education against me, alleging that I wanted to foist a successor on the university. The petitioners wrote and signed their names. So, the Ministry invited me to pick up the petition. Once I got it, I came to the Senate and read it aloud. Incidentally, one of the people who allegedly signed the petition was in attendance. He vowed and vehemently denied being involved, and I could see his sincerity. You know people with a dubious intent can rope in somebody just to give their plan a veneer of credibility and show of support. After reading that petition sent to the minister which had the names of the authors, all the other ones that were published on social media were signed by anonymous individuals.
You have had five years and by God’s grace your tenure will end meritoriously. When you look back at your tenure, what are you most happy about?
There are many things I am most happy about. I came with a vision, Project 200, which was to place the university among the best 200 universities in the world, among the best 10 in Africa and the first in Nigeria. As of today, among universities that are less than 50 years old, we rank at less than 600 in the world (so we have moved significantly), we were at 4,974, we have also moved to number 31 in Sub-Saharan Africa and number four in Nigeria. It shows that we have made great progress and I am happy about that. If you now begin to dissect this, you see human capacity building and academic excellence. When I came on board, it was difficult to present inaugural lectures in the university because people were shy about this academic expose, which is done in universities. But I was able to persuade people to do it. At the time I came in as vice chancellor, we were at the 44th or 45th inaugural lecture, but as at last week we have held the 102nd inaugural lecture, which means that we have more than doubled it. This clearly shows that academic excellence has increased. That is just one index to use. Another index is in terms of grantsmanship. Before, people were not attracting grants to the university. But now, almost every faculty and department in the university is seeking and getting both national and international grants; even the hosting of international conferences was non-existent, but now we are having these things everywhere. We have exchange programmes, you also see innovative research coming out from our various departments, sciences, engineering and pharmaceutical science departments, and we have also digitized our processes. We use ICT to move a lot of our things. I am so proud of our IT innovation. Our appraisal processes are now digitized as professors use information technology to assess our students. Teaching and learning, and some of our academic defences are totally done online. Some of our Sandwich programmes have been revolutionized and are done online, there is no need for physical classes anymore. Classes and exams are done online. In the past, they had a phobia for ICT. Of course, in terms of infrastructure, we have done fantastic work in that regard. All over the nation, universities are all hamstrung by funds, but we moved away from depending on funds generated from school fees and began to focus more on private donations and endowment projects. That is why we have seen the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Bank of Industry (BOI), BUA Group working on projects in Unizik. Dangote Group is about starting a hostel project in the university. We have the Emeka Anyaoku Centre and a project endowed by the TY Danjuma Foundation, and several others. Individuals across Nigeria are endowing projects. We tried to quantify the value of what we have attracted and saw that the amount is close to US$200 million worth of projects. We have been able to do a lot of administrative reforms. We have digitized our orientation programme and now hold it in modules. Our students go through it and have to write and pass exams on the orientation so that they understand what they need to know about the university; they are no longer ignorant of university laws and the operational system. It is digitized on their phones, iPads and laptops, and they can access all of these things at their convenience. We made sure that the hostels were refurbished with facilities en suite. In terms of sports, we have an 18-hole golf course. Anambra as a state didn’t have one; Unizik is the first to establish a golf course in the state and people come from all over the nation to play golf. We also have a Zoo. We did a survey and noticed that people were cutting trees on university land, so we partnered with the Nigeria Conservation Foundation to plant 60,000 trees, which are essentially economic trees. Based on the trees we planted, we are going to be earning some money from the trees – carbon credit – the trees will help to remove carbon dioxide from the air and put in oxygen. Today, the university now has a standard master plan to guide its physical development. In essence, we have touched many areas. Our training programmes cut across both academic and non-academic staff. Today promotions are fast, and we were the first, after the COVID-19 pandemic and the long strike, to give palliatives to our staff across aboard. That motivated them a lot to work harder and smarter. We have started many new academic programmes in line with modern realities. We have made the Unizik Business School to be autonomous and it is moving in giant strides.
Looking at the five fingers of the ACADA Vision, which one of them would you say has recorded the most success and become entrenched so much that it cannot be reversed even after you have left office as VC?
It is the first ‘A’ (academic excellence). It has become very entrenched because we have put in proper university culture, by that I mean proper academic culture that engenders excellence, which is the root of all that we are talking about. We have changed the appraisal system, dissertation system, mode of teaching and we have taught people how to deliver lectures and improve grantsmanship. It is a thing that will be difficult to reverse because people are moving very fast now. Just before talking with you, I read an email from staffers of the university who went to Uganda for post-doctorate programmes, even in Harvard University and other big universities. I am really happy that the university academic culture has become entrenched.
As at the time you came in as VC, there were other people in the senior hierarchy of the leadership. Would you say they bought into the vision strongly enough, to be able to sustain what you have started as a continuation of your legacy?
Yes, certainly. They bought into the vision very seriously because you can’t do these things that I have mentioned in a nutshell, and accomplish them without their endorsement and support. To achieve these things, you must have a very wonderful, willing, diligent, forward-looking, hard working and committed team of individuals ready to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you, stand in the gap with you as the bible enjoins, believe in the vision and eager to run with it (again, as the bible says). I had this kind of support from those in the leadership who worked with me. They believed in the vision, they brought in ideas, put in their time and talents, to see to the accomplishment of the goals, the various programmes and projects. The support was across board, from senior colleagues, to those in the middle level and among the junior staff. The support was massive. That is why there is jubilation everywhere as we go through the valedictory activities. The show of love is very high.
In the course of my work, I spoke with a contact at GLOBACOM, which says it is now focused on empowering dreams. What is the university doing in the specific area of ICT which GLOBACOM can show interest in and work with you to advance those goals?
We need a data centre and we have proposals for that. We have a Management Information Communication Technology Unit (MICTU), which is used to drive the in-house digitalisation programme of the university. Right now our appraisal system, audit system and our CBT were developed in-house. So, our MICTU has evolved and grown. The young people there (male and female) are so knowledgeable and can develop anything you can think of, to create. We gave them the enabling environment to exercise their brains. One of the key things we have been talking about is that we need to have a data centre. I believe that GLOBACOM is in the right position to give that to us. One of our friends, Dr. Okey Anueyiagu is endowing an AI Institute at Unizik. So, we will welcome GLO to partner with us, to have a well-equipped data centre. It will be a big asset to our ICT upward growth.
Were there any specific things you wanted to do, but could not achieve them because of time?
Yes, there are a couple of them, mostly those that have to do with infrastructure. We were thinking of building a Senate Chamber that would have a sitting capacity of more than 2,000. Again, I have done the first phase of the stadium which has tartan tracks and other facilities, but we have not been able to build the podium.
When you finally hand over, what will you be doing?
I will go on a one year sabbatical.