That Afe Babalola University May Truly Excel
Juwon Jacobs
Afe Babalola University, AdoEkiti, has never ceased to tickle my fancy. The person and personality, the achievements and contributions of its founder and proprietor, the revered legal icon, Aare Emmanuel Afe Babalola, SAN, CON, to various facets of our national life, particularly endear the institution to me. Over the years, Chief Afe Babalola has been a consistent benefactor to Nigeria’s educational sector, making contributions to the standardisation of quality and the provision of enduring infrastructure. Lecture theatres, auditoriums, faculty buildings, libraries and more, adorn institutions like the Universities of Lagos, AdoEkiti, and Ibadan among others, courtesy of the benevolence of Chief Afe Babalola. Many under privileged youths equally owe their education to his generosity.
Chief Afe Babalola envisioned the up-coming institution, fondly called ABUAD, to correct the warps and lacuna in the archetypal Nigerian university, in the quest for a world class and up to date institution.
Most parents who have enthusiastically consented to their children and wards attending Afe Babalola University, have done so because of the inimitable quality of the man, because of how hard he has striven to build an aesthetically impressive, genuinely functional and truly top quality institution.
For the avoidance of doubt, the anthem of the school, reads thus: ABUAD we come Founded by Afe Babalola A believer in industry and determination A unique environment with aesthetic structures A beacon in University delivery unequalled Design for quality and education To mould character and infuse knowledge Out to lead others Proud of ABUAD, the launching path to excellence With determination and faith In ABUAD philosophy of industry, service and character
Our future for greatness and excellence is assured.
Indeed, the added fact that Chief Afe Babalola has literally relocated from Ibadan, his home for the past five decades, to the campus of the university itself, where he personally dotes on the institution like a caring mother its new born, tending to teething problems of the citadel, has reinforced the confidence of many such parents.
Scouring around and stitching resources together to pay the stipulated school fees and the imperative regular feeding and maintenance costs for such parents, in an institution a scholar-uncle once described as “dangerously expensive”, is therefore mitigated by that constant consciousness of an Afe Babalola patriarchal figure, in the affairs of the school.
Certain developments over the years, however, would necessitate improved conscientiousness and vigilance on the part of Chief Afe Babalola in the management of the university, so that his vision in initiating the project which ever since has been shared by many, is not dimmed or extinguished.
While certain mistakes and oversight can be excused given the relative young age of the institution whose ground-breaking ceremony was performed instructively on October 1, 2008, a citadel which aims for excellence must commit less and less such avoidable gaffes.
A first example: At the end of the 2011/2012 academic session, students of the university came home with an official demand from the Office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Professor Michael O. Ajisafe, now the Acting Vice Chancellor. The letter, personally signed by him, is reproduced verbatim: sum of N70,000 as part of the cost of replacement of the CCTV camera in all the 16 floors of the hostel.
This money must be paid with your school fees in the same draft before or at the registration point when you are returning to the university. Yours faithfully, Prof. M.O. Ajisafe Deputy Vice Chancellor.
As one who has a number of male wards in the institution, I was naturally struck by various aspects of the communication. First, I wonder which university Prof. Ajisafe attended as a young man in Nigeria and how many times youngsters owned up to mischief and truancy which was one of the highpoints of school life in those days. Secondly, I couldn’t understand why students will have to pay for such damages, outside the usual fees for “caution”, encapsulated in their school fees schedule. Third, I shuddered at the irritating commandism of the second paragraph, which reads inter-alia,
“Each male student therefore is ordered to pay the sum of N70,000….”
For Christ’s sake, when did the University become a military formation?
Perhaps the most instructive blunder committed by Prof. Ajisafe is an error of Mathematics. As Deputy Vice Chancellor, he doubled as Provost, College of Sciences and one expected him to be more circumspect with his sums. If a CCTV camera supposedly cost N7million, and if hypothetically just 1,000 male students were asked to pay, N70,000.00 each, that would yield a staggering N70million, and not N7million!
A quick detection of this error and subsequent contact with the erstwhile Vice Chancellor, Prof. Sidi Osho, by some well-meaning parent, saved many parents and guardians who would have had to pay 10 times what they should have paid in these harsh times.
Administrators at the level of Deputy Vice-Chancellors cannot afford such mistakes too frequently. You can’t blame it on your Secretary, please.
The other day, a colleague was agonising over the probable mind-set in ABUAD, and possibly other private universities, that parents who send their children and wards to such schools are probably “money-miss road” bourgeois. I probed further and he informed me that towards the end of 2013, while he was still recovering from the near N1million he paid to settle his son then a 300Level student of International Relations in ABUAD into school, his department suddenly “legislated” that all students will be proceeding on a field trip to Ghana. They were expected to communicate same to their parents and guardians and make immediate payment of N150,000.00 per student!
With N150,000.00 each, I am able to maintain my nephew and niece at the University of Ilorin and Kogi State University, for six months in a year, respectively. About half of this sum, N75,000.00 is specified for school dues, while the rest is for their maintenance. It may be inadequate, but that is the much I can afford from my resources. And the young folks are getting by.
If parents and guardians of students in particular faculties and departments must undertake excursions or field trips, why must this be made to look like an after-thought? What is the job of the Department of Academic Planning? Why was this not captured in the payment schedule of such students at the beginning of the session, so that parents will have a global view of the bills they will have to pay in the course of the session?
As if that was not enough, the same Department of International Relations recently herded its 300 Level students to South Africa on a similar impromptu excursion, at the expense of hapless parents. Each parent coughed out a whopping N290,000.00, the equivalent of USD 1,500 for a ruthlessly brief three-day trip. To be sure, the students numbering 120 were woken up on the instructions of the school authorities at 5am on Saturday May 2, 2015, for the road-leg of the trip from Ado-Ekiti to Lagos. Actual take-off from Ado-Ekiti was not until 3pm! Challenges on the way and traffic constraints ensured they did not arrive Lagos until about midnight. They thus missed their flight and had to be rescheduled for Sunday May 3. They arrived in Johannesburg in the morning of Monday May 4, were immediately taken to Pretoria and barely visited the Pretoria Zoo and Pretoria University before they were bundled home on Thursday May 7! And N290,000.00 paid directly to the school accounts, plus add on by parents who imagined their wards could do some symbolic shopping, had evaporated!
The delegation was reportedly led by the Provost of the College of Social and Management Sciences, one Dr. Alawiye Adams. And his explanation for the interruption of the trip was the on-going incidence of xenophobic attacks, in South Africa! Come to think of it, did the attacks not begin several weeks before the children were flown out on May 3? Why the sudden realisation that South Africa was unsafe only when the delegation arrived there? The day after they arrived, Dr. Adams cargoed them to the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, NIIA, and ensured the helpless youngsters did not get back to Ado-Ekiti until after midnight on Friday May 8, fatigued, jet-lagged and ill.
I am aware that federal government delegates to the 2013 African Cup of Nations in South Africa, were funded to the tune of N320,000.00 each for the initial ten-day duration of that competition. N160,000.00 was voted for air tickets which was high season, while the balance N160,000.00 represented USD 1,000 estacode for accommodation and feeding in hotels in Rosebank, Randburg, and similar up-scale places in Johannesburg. How do we explain the deployment of N290,000.00 for a four-day trip, where the children were even paired in their rooms and tickets heavily discounted because of low season traffic?
Since the University began to turn out graduates in 2013, yet another culture of exploitation has been in place. Students are made to purchase academic gowns outrightly while also being charged what is called “final year dues!” Can you beat that? For those graduating this year, the graduating gown costs N60,000.00, while the final year dues is N25,000.00.
I still don’t understand what anyone will be doing with the academic gown of his institution, years and decades after graduation. In our own time, the gown was borrowed for a fee, part of which was paid back to the borrower upon return of the gown to the university within the time specified. For a fact, the academic gown worn many decades ago can only be under-size now and absolutely useless even if one decided to clownishly convert same into a choir dress!
So in the run up to graduation this year, ABUAD parents and guardians have already paid a whopping N85,000.00, enough to be split equally between my wards in Unilorin and Kogi State University, and keep them self-sufficient for two months each.
And this culture of knocking the students around like children in a glorified secondary school, must stop. The Vice-Chancellor has a message to pass to the students and issues summons like King Pharaoh, that they all assemble at midnight in front of the administrative building. What is that supposed to mean? This is definitely not the practice in London University, or Harvard University or Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, whose traditions Chief Afe Babalola aims to achieve in ABUAD.
Regular visitors who have to lay over in the premises of ABUAD have complained of the exorbitant tariffs charged in the university’s guest houses which is not commensurate with services rendered. But for the fact of wanting to be close to their children and wards during such visits, many parents will rather stay in accommodation outside ABUAD precincts. Why pay say N20,000.00 for a one night accommodation in ABUAD if you cannot get the kind of services the same amount of money will get you in Kwara Hotel, Ilorin or Excellence Hotel, Ogba, Ikeja, Lagos?
These random observations are in no way exhaustive. They are the sincere thoughts of a true Nigerian patriot and spiritual stakeholder in the grand vision of Chief Afe Babalola to bestow on the current generation and those to come, a profound legacy of excellence in university education in Nigeria.
It is hoped that Chief Babalola will take immediate steps to address these issues. The Afe Babalola University brand is without doubt an inspiring one. But eagle-eyed attention must be redoubled to operators of the system, so that carelessness, greed, avarice and the penchant for extortion and racketeering are checked. Chief Babalola has planted a multi-breed seedling. It must be appropriately watered, weeded and tended, especially as it strides towards its first decade of coming to be, in 2018.