By Bamigbola Gbolagunte
Prof. Adesegun Fatusi is a renowned medical expert and administrator who has served as the Provost, College of Health Sciences, Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Ile-Ife. From there, he was appointed as the Vice Chancellor of the Ondo State-owned University of Medical Sciences (UNIMED), Ondo. Few weeks ago he completed his tenure. In this interview he looks back at the highpoints of his tenure and gives insight on how he overcame challenges that confronted his administration.
How challenging would you say the job of a Vice Chancellor is?
The job of a Vice Chancellor is the most challenging of any Chief Executive Chief job in the whole world because a VC is dealing with different sets of people with different interests and different backgrounds and everyone feels he or she is superior. The job of the Vice Chancellor is almost a frustrating job because you’re working under frustration in most cases. But if you have a supportive team, like I had, the job would be made a bit easier. To cope or lead in an academic environment is a little bit difficult because you’re dealing with intellectual people who have serious beliefs in themselves and will want you to do things in their own way. You have to deal with the challenge of regulatory bodies, the headache of the admission process and several other issues. Not many VCs sleep at night. A Vice Chancellor works during the day and at night. It’s really the most challenging work in the whole world. My five years journey was without any regret, though there were many challenges and I know that life is all about challenges. I’m happy that the Lord surrounded me with good people who made the job exciting despite the challenges.
Are you comfortable with the proliferation of universities in the country?
For the future of universities in Nigeria, I totally believe that the Federal Government should stop establishing universities because it does not make any sense to me to have universities that cannot be properly funded. I learned that the members of staff of a university that had just started not too long ago, have gone on strike because they are not being paid. Schools that they are already running are losing accreditation because they are not providing resources. So, it absolutely makes no sense to me that the Federal Government should continue to establish universities. On the other hand, states and individuals’ private universities might be at a different level. This is what I mean, even with all our universities, does it mean that the proportion of graduates in Nigeria is high enough? Or does it mean that the number of our graduates is good enough? The answer is no.
So, what do you think can be done about this?
I think the Federal Government should concentrate on funding what it has started, improving their capacities. What is a state doing with four universities when it is not able to fund them? I think states can carefully look at their needs to see what they have. So, instead of starting new universities, it would make more sense to see how you can invest in what you have already to expand their capacity.
What is the state of health and medical education in Nigeria?
The answer is “very good”. Why will America be demanding for our doctors? Why will you disturb me to have my nurses? That’s the greatest evidence that you need about the quality of our products. I know the Americans, the way they are, they won’t want to share our products. But they’ve tasted and seen that indeed our health education is not bad. You know, like the Bible says, ‘taste and see that the Lord is good.’ So, you taste it and see that our health education is good. It doesn’t mean everything is perfect, no. There are gaps that we need to fill and there are perhaps three million gaps. Number one is the gap in terms of professionals. Our programmes are concentrated in some areas and they are rejected in some areas. For example, we have been having medical courses for the past 70 years or more. Before we came to UNIMED there was no speech therapy programme, yet we know that those programmes are increasingly more important, they are more important sometimes than medical ones. Look, as we are all growing older, we’re going to all need rehabilitation at a point in time. As the world continues with industrialisation and accidents, we need rehabilitation. So, our programmes do not look at this uniformly as it has been skewed in some areas.
Also, health information management is another discipline not well looked at. Without health information, how do you run hospitals? How do you run the whole dynamics around the health infrastructure systems? Yet there is no single course on health information management in this country and you have seen that for the last three years we haven’t started the programme. So, in terms of the blend, we need to expand more to those areas. It would surprise you to know that dentists are few in this country because it’s very expensive to train dentists. Only two state universities in Nigeria have dentistry – Lagos State University and the University of Medical Sciences, Ondo. Why? Because it is too expensive to train dentists and we can only train a few at a time.
About 97 percent of Nigerians have no idea about dentistry. They have never actually seen dentists before and we should all be seeing dentists regularly. It is only in UNIMED that we don’t only run dentistry, but have a faculty of dentistry that has a combination of three degree programmes – Dental Technology, Dental Hygiene, and Dentistry itself. So, that needs to be changed.
The second thing that needs to be changed is the investment in infrastructure for training. We are training well in Nigeria but at a big cost to the practitioners. Schools are struggling, teachers are struggling. Our teachers are not enough because they are taking them away. So, there is a need for greater investment in terms of what you do with training that can deepen our quality more and enable us to meet the need for export as well as home.
The third area that I think we need to do more is in terms of research work that we do in the context of our training because research costs money and the place to start being a scientist is not only in graduates, it’s to see how we integrate more and more of that into our training programme and strengthening capacity of undergraduate and postgraduate students. So, those for me are three dimensions that I think we need to do more in terms of our health and medical programmes.
Looking back at your tenure, what was the experience like?
In the course of my five years as the Vice Chancellor of UNIMED, we had several interactions. This is a journey of partnership in a way. The media has been a strong partner in our engagements. As you know, the academic community of the university stands on the tripod of teaching, research, and services. So, you can look at teaching and research as an academic dimension. One thing that we are very excited about is that during my tenure we went from a university that had 14 courses to one that has 40 courses, and the largest collection of health and medical courses anywhere in Nigeria.
Number two, we started our postgraduate programme in 2021. My predecessor and my colleagues left a good foundation for our postgraduate programmes. Today, we have a total of 60 programmes that are running. We also brought in 10 new courses to the Nigerian university system. Those courses never existed before 2020. We were the ones that wrote the advocacy, the plan for the university and today, Nigeria enjoys a course like audiology at undergraduate level. It never existed at that level. Nigeria now has a course like speech therapy, Again, one of the things we were able to do was to pathfind the Nigerian university communities. What we did was to lead, that is, light the candle for others to see the pathway for greater engagement in their science education.
The country is facing a shortage of health professionals due to the Japa syndrome and consequently, the Federal Government has also increased the retirement age of doctors and other professionals. Do you think this approach is a solution to the Japa syndrome?
For me, the increase in the age of retirement was a practical response to a prevailing challenge. We have a challenge that is multi-dimensional. The first is what you call Japa syndrome. Many young people are moving away and those who are on ground, who are agile, who can still do the work are retiring early. So, the Federal Government’s approach is such a practical solution.
A new Vice Chancellor has been appointed, what are your expectations, particularly as it concerns the legacy you left behind in that university?
My message to my successor is to be a leader that listens to the people. Ultimately, leadership is not about an individual, it’s about a frontal position when you are working with the people. No leader accomplishes things on his own. Leaders should accomplish things through the people and so the first thing I would say to my successor is to connect with them (the workers), work with them, be a part of a team in a sense, not somebody that is distant and somebody that separates from the people. I think that the university is very simple and also different. You are a master as you are today. Tomorrow, you are back as a lecturer. So, it’s simply a temporary position of leadership and so contact your consciousness that you are not special.