Gabriel Dike and Gloria Ikegbule
Vice Chancellor, Christopher University (UNICHRIS), Mowe, Ogun State, Prof. Friday Ndubuisi says private varsities are bridging the gaps observed in public universities by producing quality leaders.
What prepared you for the job and what have been your experience?
I was at the University of Lagos for a long time before I came here on posting, in what I may call ‘Leave of absence’. Since 2015, I have been ploting the affairs of this university. UNICHRIS is a university that is very dear to us and we have been doing everything possible to make sure that we become a university of first choice. Our effort so far in the last two to three years is yielding fruit. I can rightly say that the university has taken off effectively. However, we still have a long way to go. But we are not relenting in our effort.
What makes Christopher University unique?
Our focus is to unite practice and theory. In other words, we have a strong link with the private sector. Our mission and vision is to ensure that there is a merger between town and gown. Theory is important, it is a platform students need to take off. But practice is very important. If you have theory that is not linked up with practice, it is a waste of time. We interact with the private sectors, professionals because at the end of the day our products are going out to mix up and make their contributions to the society. More importantly, this is an era of Information Technology (IT). Everything about us is computerized. Every staff is computer literate. We communicate with our students via online. UNICHRIS is an institution that is founded on modern tenet of information technology.
Three years down the line have your courses been accredited?
We have an institutional verification sometime in November last year. We were given a temporary license, but now it is permanent. From the information we got from the National Universities Commission (NUC) they came to see if we have got to a stage where they will give us permanent license. NUC will be coming between October and November 2019 for the final accreditation of our courses. Usually the practice is that after three years NUC will come for accreditation of courses. They were supposed to come last year having been licensed in 2015. It happened that we did not take off until 2016.
What kind of student are you producing for the country, will they be students that will come out looking for job or be self employed?
Our interest here is to produce students that will be productive and are employers of labour and not those that will go out seeking for job. For instance, some months ago, Google came to teach our students how they can stay from the comfort of their rooms and be making money online. They came to teach them how to be practical people. Emotional and artificial intelligence are the kinds of knowledge we want to impart on our students. Entrepreneurship is a major course here. We teach the theory and the practical aspect of it. We want our students by the time they are graduating from here they will not only be depending on their certificate but what they can do with the skills they acquired in UNICHRIS. We are interested in creating avenues through which the students can be skilled before graduation. We have linkages with organisations. For instance, we have linkages with ACCA and are making effort to bring in ICAN so that by the time our Economics and Accounting students are graduating they will be in their final part of their ACCA or ICAN. More so, very soon our students will be ripe to do their internship and we are making contacts. By the time they get out there they will find themselves useful.
Universities are known for specific courses. What is the focus of UNICHRIS?
Our emphasis is business, communication and law. Our information science has not taken off but we have put everything in place for its take off. More so, it is digital and it is what the modern world wants. Our communication system is going to be one of the best in the country because our studios and laboratory are well equipped. We want to produce 21st century graduate who will fit into the new system in vogue in the modern world.
Many see private universities as business. As a professor from a public university, do you agree with that view?
I am in a good position to speak on that because I have been in University of Lagos from my youth corp days and I have been here for about four years now. Any one that establishes a private university with a view of making money is going to the wrong place. Operating private universities is like someone who wants to give back to the society. Setting up the structure of this place, it runs into billions and if the aim is to make profit. How many students do we have or how much are we able to generate in a session? A university like Harvard started with nine students many years ago and now Harvard is world renowned. It means that the people that originated the idea they are not the ones reaping the profit. Establishing a university is about those that wants to give back to society but in the process profit will come however, it takes time. The gestation period of a university is very long and it consumes a lot of money especially in our kind of environment. Here we provide our own electricity, water, security. So anybody that sees university as business is wrong, rather it should be to give back to society. Education is a big industry. Unfortunately, we do not give premium to education as it is done in the Western world. In United State of America, the private universities are also supported by the private sectors, the government also support by giving scholarships to the students because they know that education is central to development.
There are insinuations that private universities are dumping ground for retired professors and other lecturers. What is your take on this view?
I don’t agree with that. I rather believe that those that are retiring from public universities are big asset to the private universities. What is 70 years, if not that we have a bad health system. A man of 70 years is still strong. A professor at 70 is still very active, is experienced and can be very effective. The point is when you listen to a professor talk; it makes a lot of difference. Isaac Newton was a professor but he was appearing only twice in a year in his university. And any time he comes, the atmosphere is electrified when he talks. In the university system you do not teach but lecture. Prof Wole Soyinka is 84 yet if he goes to place like University of Lagos to lecture, you will see the crowd that wants to come and listen to him.
Ranking and the poor performance by Nigerian universities, how can this be addressed?
There are lot of factors involved in university ranking even though they may not be completely correct. Most of our universities have very high standards. In ranking, organisation is important. But in most of our universities, organisation is poor and this issue of electricity, water, infrastructure and even strike affects it.
But in term of manpower, you cannot compare Nigerian universities with most universities in Africa. I had a colleague, a professor in engineering, who went for accreditation in a university in one of our neibouring country. A whole Faculty of Engineering has two professors whereas in a place like UNILAG, just a department, we have up to three or four professors that are not made on sentiment but have published. NUC has been able to tidy up some of these things. Nigeria universities as far as I know are not pushovers like most people would think. Some of our students that go abroad to do their masters, they excel. It is like they have come to an environment where there are facilities but we were working in an environment where we had to do everything by ourselves. Now that they are in a better environment, you see them performing very well.
UNESCO recommends 26 percent allocation to the education sector and government is struggling to meet up. Do you think it is a contributing factor to the mirage of problems confronting the sector?
Why is the western world developing more than us? It is because they put premium on education. In a place like Germany, the rate of enrollment in the universities was going down. Do you know what they did? They said the universities should be liberalized in term of funding and the likes. Secondary school in Germany is free and at the university level they were paying certain amount but they have liberalized it. The same thing with United State of America; only few people can pay their fees unless you are being funded under scholarship. So what they do in US is to make loan available to students and when they graduate, they start paying the loan when they have gotten job. The truth about it is that the government is not pushing fund into education and it requires political will. Our leaders, most of their children study abroad. They know what it means and cannot study here. Our educational system is a tragedy.
Do you support a state of emergency in the sector?
It is long overdue. What UNESCO recommends is 26 per cent but we have not even reached 11 or thereabout per cent. That means our leaders are not interested. They don’t have the patriotic zeal. They have killed the secondary schools. How many parents send their children to public secondary schools? The primary school died a long time ago. In Lagos and Ogun states, schools that are functional are those that have been returned to the mission. The point is, education is not cheap and it is not supposed to be cheap. Except for politicians, anybody that sends his children abroad to study, know that such a person is strong. How many Nigerians can afford 20 thousand dollars to pay for only school fee aside other expenses?
Should private universities benefit from the TETFUND grant or do you think your proprietor has enough to run UNICHRIS?
Why would my proprietor have enough? It’s a big irony because TETFUND is the idea of ASUU. The idea that ASUU had in mind is not the structure that TETFUND has assumed. It is meant to be an intervention fund but government has made it to be a regular dole out fund. TEFUND has even gone to the extent of building universities for some states. That was not why TETFUND was established. This money comes from the private sector and they say the private universities should not benefit from it. Are students in the private universities not Nigerians? If we are able to produce our own Bill Gates from this university, is it not Nigeria that will benefit from it? The graduates from private universities, are they not going to work in the Nigerian environment? Why we have insecurity in the land is because government has not been careful enough to ensure that every interest is taken care of.
How well do you sleep having students in your custody?
Yes, that is the point I am making. We spend a lot of money to keep this place running. For security, we have a regular arrangement but in the evening there is an additional arrangement to make sure that our students are secured. In an environment where we have high level of insecurity like kidnapping and armed robbery: we are very conscious of the fact that we are like loco parentis to these students. Their parents have entrusted them to us. We are interested in their health, welfare, security and, we do not want anything to happen to them. We have adequate arrangement on ground to ensure our students are protected.
Some educationists say it is cost effective and rewarding to have children in public institiutions. What is your take?
Cost effective, yes but rewarding, I am very skeptical about that. Most parents now prefer to send their children to private university, especially for those children that cannot be easily controlled and parents who feel that they do not have sufficient time to monitor their children. You will be surprised in some private unniversitities, students are not allowed to come with their phones. In this university, before any student goes out of this environment, he/she must tell us the reason he/she wants to go out, we verify the reason and then call the parents to confirm that the student actually was going home. And if you say you are coming back in three days time, you must come back in three days time. In the public universities, parents don’t pay much attention to their wards. Infact, it is as good as education is free in the public university. In terms of cost most parents cannot afford to send their children to private universities, but in terms of what you are going to gain, you will gain a lot from private universities.
Many have argued that lecturers in private universities are less professional and are mostly recruited on the basis of cheap labour. How true is that judging from the criteria of recruitment in UNICHRIS?
No, they are not cheap labour. Most of our lecturers are Ph.D holders – professors. We follow NUC standard. There is a minimum they are not supposed to go below and as a matter of fact, the private universities, even pay more because they want to attract good hands. We do not have cheap lecturers here. Our lecturers are standard from recognized schools and we place them where they are supposed to be.
How can government enthrone quality education following the incessant pitfalls experienced in the sector?
It requires political will. Government must see education as a priority area. When they see it as priority, then they must invest resources into it. This is what will help the country develop. We have brains like Bill Gates and Mark Zukerberg in Nigeria but the question is, ‘have we created the platform to help them develop themselves?’ When you go to public universities, you will cry.
Looking at Christopher University, in 10 years times where do you hope to be?
In ten years time, I want it to be a university to be reckoned with. It would be a centre for excellent and our products will stand out when they go for job interviews. We see ourselves producing great industrialist, bankers, politicians, pressmen, the likes of Dangote, Bill Gates, Nobel Prize winners. We are anxious to produce leaders of tomorrow from here; people that will be able to make sufficient impact in Nigeria and the world.