You recently announced the Entrepreneurship Education from the university. Now, talking about entrepreneurship, what level have you been able to take the university in your first term and your plans for another term of five years?
I thank God for the opportunity to have led the university for five years. Whatever success we had was a collective success of every section, every individual, and every department. We all worked hard together to take the university to its current enviable height. We’ve been able to graduate two sets. It’s a major satisfaction to us as our permanent graduation date has not changed from first Saturday of June. Most of our graduates are outside there, creating businesses, doing postgraduate studies, serving the country, e.t.c.
Also, we’ve been able to attract a very strong academic body from within and outside the country. We’ve settled down to research work, in terms of teaching, academics, scholarly activities. We have been able to build an academic body that has reflected in the reputation of the university. The excellence of our academic body in the past five years has reflected in the university. We should also know that a mediocre academic will in turn mean a mediocre university.
We’ve been able to put in place strategies for recruiting students that has actually helped us to attract very good students. We have what we call Open House. We are the only university that does that. In summer, we open our university to secondary school students who are potential students, their parents, teachers. They come here, they meet department, colleges, listen to activities, to know what course to pursue, or not, the implication, how to work hard etc. This enables them to make up their mind whether to come to KWASU or not.
The typical thing in Nigeria is that ‘there are too many students in the country; there is no need to worry.’ We don’t take things lightly. But when people made up their mind to come to you, the tendency is that they will succeed. In addition, it enables us to attract excellent students that are relevant to our own goals. For instance, we have some courses that other universities do not offer. Like Aeronautics, Entrepreneurial Education. We intend to expand this open House to enable parents all over the country participate.
We’ve been able to create relationship with industries, because that’s really the job of universities. That is, to encourage active participation of industry. For example, we have even created our own new industries in partnership with other industries. We have the Rana power, which is to make solar panel and it will take off soon. We have the Malete Film village, which is absolutely fantastic, in terms of funding which it can give the university, and campus tours and travels, which is a tourist business that can plan your tours to all parts of the world, including accommodation. And these are incorporated companies to make us less dependent on government and assist us in funding our world class standard education delivery, research, collaborations, fund reserve, e.t.c.
We also have our entrepreneurship orientation. This is an entrepreneurial university. I make bold to say that KWASU today is the leading public university in entrepreneurship. We even teach directors all over the world. They come during summer to review curriculum, strategy for delivery, to rub minds and assess where Nigeria is at the moment in entrepreneurship education in higher institution, involving directors of polytechnics, colleges of education. We’ve become a centre of entrepreneurial education in tertiary education in Nigeria.
We’ve also gone beyond that as we’ve introduced entrepreneurial education in such a way that our students are entrepreneurs, whether you do engineering or Islamic studies. I have said it, that this university will be ready to disown a student if he roams the street after graduation from here; because really we’ve empowered them. We’ve created an entrepreneurial fund, which we are now ready to implement to complement and support any person who is our product looking for funding.
So we can now give them money since before they leave here, they already have a project as they would have tested it, run it because some of them have businesses created while they were students. It’s not about looking for what to do; they’ve already found what to do.
So, if money is the problem, we take from the entrepreneurial fund and partner with them as start up fund. We are creating incubation because these are the future ones, so that some of them may even remain here and practice until they can stand alone before they go.
They would have access to lecturers, facilities, a little bit of an office, secretariat support. You can get all this before you become ready on your own. This is the next stage we are working on.
Also on entrepreneurship, we started a degree programme in entrepreneurship education – which is to produce teachers for secondary schools. We are the only university in Nigeria doing that. That’s why I said we’re the leading university in entrepreneurial studies. We still need to do more, but we are proud of what we’ve achieved.
What are your plans for future?
Now, going into future, we want to set a solid foundation so that it becomes the norm, coming from a state with poor revenue allocation. So, we can’t depend 100 per cent on the government, especially because of our goal in 21st century education, which is world class. So we must have a strong foundation in terms of funding.
We have started KWASU foundation. It’s going to be an independent foundation run by a philanthropist and set of philanthropist as board of trustees and board of directors with day to day fund raising and investment of the fund anywhere in the university.
Also, there will be re-investing of the fund in infrastructure and research according to their decision. For example, grant to lecturers to focus on resolving certain problems of Nigeria or construction of building, and we make our strategic plan available to them. I will be a member, but the members do all they do by themselves. It is independent of the university and government.
This is because our future must be secured and this is the way we go. We also want to go around the world for possibility of fund raising. For instance, the United States has an opportunity to raise fund for charity. A university is recognised as non-profit organisation and a charity in US Law which people can donate to and get tax reducible credit. So, we’ve registered KWASU as a recognised institution in America that can collect tax reducible donations. We’re working with King Bauldwin Foundation, meaning that any friend of Nigeria, Africa, individuals can send donation to the university.
We have set up an office to start writing letters on our activities to people to attract donations and we’ve started receiving statement of account. And we intend doing same in other countries like Canada and UK and the rest so that in addition to the foundation, we can get other means of funding.
We also have Centre for Sponsor projects in the university that encourages academic staff of the university to look for grant from all over the world. The centre gets information all round the globe and disseminate to staff according to their areas of specialisation and their interest for research. They then write grant application and the centre monitor all process to assist the staff and ensure accountability.
As part of future plan, we plan to regenerate and refresh regularly. Most Nigerian universities recycle and this does not leave room for regeneration or renewal. A person that does not go to class regularly becomes Head of department next year, later he becomes the dean and eventually the vice chancellor. How would that university ever change? So, we are planning with the government to advertise our vacant post to the world and allow for competition, from within and outside getting the best for the university and remaining world Class University with this measure of regenerating, renewal and refreshing.
Almost all university in the country just recycle rotten, archaic, myopic academic who thinks once they are professors they don’t need to teach, do research but only want to be in politics or become directors, Vice Chancellor. With this, Nigeria is not developing.
Would you say that governments at various levels have adequately utilised abundant reservoir of knowledge and expertise domicile in Nigerian universities?
No, they have not. What you see is the way they reduce scholars to politicians. Imagine the appointment of a professor as advisers to a chief of staff. It is demeaning of the position, but it is actually the professors that are looking for the positions. They are already archaic as they do nothing after becoming professor. They’d rather be a councillor with a fleet of cars and buildings, rather than being a true academic.
The crisis we have today is because the academic are not true to the profession and government does not see the potentials of the academics. And it’s very sad as both sides have not been fair to Nigeria.
The solution to this is that universities should be true universities and to create wealth. Teaching people is just a small part of job of the university. But that’s the focus and that’s why we have many roaming the streets.
They are taught and issued with certificate but no use for it; because the universities had not concerned themselves to creating wealth by collaborating with industries with helping government. Universities should be able to study local or state governments, have different ideologies that are relevant to Nigeria or reflect with political challenges in the country. And bring out projections.
If you do A, B in terms of tourism, you should be able to take your state to next level of development. There should be options that are out for everyone to know on mass media, so that politicians would know of existence of this document. So that when they are campaigning they have already known some of these ideas from different universities and they would be campaigning on them and promise on what to do. But which university or academic staffers are doing that?
Politicians are doing their own, universities are on their own and Nigeria is suffering. There has to be a synergy, that’s the reality because universities are not in isolation. Many universities of the world have moved since when they are created but we have frozen on same spot. That’s why we’re not competitive and not ranked among world class. It’s sad. University of Ibadan started as world Class University, but that’s gone now. Our politicians should look up to university, while university must go out to help the nation. They must have regular collaboration with industries. They should not ask academics to come to them, academics can only make their knowledge known to industries to help them increase their profits.
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