REVITALISING UNIVERSITY EDUCATION: The Leadership Question
By
Professor Paul Omojo Omaji
Vice Chancellor, Admiralty University of Nigeria
Omaji-vc@adun.edu.ng
Protocol
Preamble
I salute the University of Ibadan Alumni Association, Asaba Chapter (UIAA, Asaba) for allowing the subject matter of this Lecture to capture its collective imagination at this time. Obviously, the Lecture is holding during a period dominated by the four-yearly ritual of electing “political leadership” for Nigeria. For some other organisations, it would have been more ‘strategic’ to join the euphoria of political electioneering. Afterall, the signs of what has now come to be known as the ‘dollarisation’ of politicking have been evident for quite some time. And your Chapter, if so minded, could have jumped on the bandwagon. The fact that the Governor of Delta State has now become a vice presidential flagbearer would have made a politics-oriented lecture even more attractive, in retrospect.
Nevertheless, your choice to spotlight the troubled university education amid the current competing, and perhaps more salacious, interests, demonstrates that the locus of your hearts remains firmly on the business of your Alma Mater. I congratulate you for that. Since University of Ibadan (UI) opened the vista of university education for Nigeria (albeit as a University College) in 1948, it is fitting that its alumni continue to relish critical opportunities to keep their Alma Mater’s core business on the front burner.
In a Convocation Lecture I gave at Port Harcourt about seven years ago, I went against a cardinal rule of presentation by telling the audience the conclusion of the Lecture right at the beginning. By so doing, I wanted to relieve them of the burden of suspense since the presentation was not a Hollywood or Nollywood drama which, as they say, requires such a spice. Then, I told them they could now snooze off anytime, if I bored them; and that I wouldn’t feel bad that my presentation, which was put together under hard labour – within a short notice while delivering a leadership workshop in Rwanda under the aegis of the Association of African Universities, was not served to my well-deserved patrons there present. In any event, I argued, it is a critical trait of effective leadership to “begin with the end in mind” (Covey, 1989).
I am tempted to do same today. Yes, UIAA Asaba gave me ample notice to prepare this Lecture. However, it ended up being put together under hard labour. The vicissitude of running the young Admiralty University of Nigeria (ADUN) as its pioneer Vice Chancellor and hosting the Governing Council in the weeks leading to this Lecture, robbed me of the precious time I needed to sit down calmly and write a ‘Nollywood’ lecture, with the expected finesse, for you today. Not even the well cultivated and widely acclaimed serenity of ADUN environment – which UI would envy – could settle me back into my usual intellectual self for today’s engagement. Therefore, to spare you the struggle of having to follow the rambling for the next one hour or so, I better give you the conclusion of the matter now. And, I will see your eyes again at the end when you open them with a sigh of relief that it is all over.
Beginning with the end
It is axiomatic that everything rises, stands and falls on leadership (Maxwell, 1993; Omaji, 2015). Revitalising university education in Nigeria is no exception. Leadership envisioned and established an enviable university education – full of vitality (in integrity, hope, aspiration and productivity), during the first 30 years in post-independence Nigeria. Leadership failure destroyed that vitality. As we clamour for revitalising university education in this country, it will also take leadership (qua leadership) to actualise it. It is the type I call, Virtuous Leadership. It is the key!
Let me present the essence of this point of arrival – in a syllogistic framework: Major premise – In all matters pertaining to revitalising university education, leadership is pre-existing and pre-eminent. Minor premise – When the virtuous are in leadership, university education rejoices; but when the wicked rule, university education mourns. Deduction – Therefore, to revitalise (make joyful) university education, we must put virtuous people in leadership at critical levels” (adapted from Omaji, 2019).
Introduction
The interface between revitalising university education and the phenomenon of leadership, especially in the Nigerian context, needs to be problematised and explored. The observable conundrum that bedevils university education in Nigeria, despite the apparent political homage paid to it, needs to be illuminated. Our experience at Admiralty University of Nigeria (ADUN) provides for me a useful springboard from which to launch such illuminative inquiry in this Lecture. It will, of necessary, be brief in scope, but sufficient to provoke further engagement with this crucial subject matter.
In this Lecture, I shall x-ray what has, over time, become of the education that UI pioneered in Nigeria and the role that ‘leadership’ has played in bringing that education to the point of provoking numerous revitalisation discourses in the last three decades. The vista of these discourses is wide and can hardly be treated exhaustively within the constraints of time and space allotted to this Lecture. I shall, therefore, limit my exploration to the issues of ‘system integrity’ and ‘productivity’ as they pertain to university education. With the conviction that leadership trumps all other factors in the dynamics that education has experienced over the period, I will give a reasonable attention to the type of leadership that can put university education in Nigeria back on the path to revitalisation.
The State of University Education in Nigeria
University education is a key driver of growth and development. This is widely acknowledged locally and internationally. Otonko (2012) made the point that “the entire developmental apparatus of the socio-economic structure revolves around a good university education”. It was, therefore, a historic moment when the colonial administration in Nigeria established the University College, Ibadan (UCI) in 1948 as an affiliate of the University of London. Though designed originally to produce lower to middle level manpower for the colonial bureaucracy, it became the premier University; and was joined by five others, by and large, to constitute the first generation Universities in post-independence Nigeria.
Following the geopolitical restructuring of Nigeria into 12 States at the end of the civil war, and within the context of the National Development Plan, 1975-1980, the Federal Government established the second generation Universities – 7 in number. In the decade of 1980 and early 1991, the Federal Government also created University of Abuja (from the defunct Open University) and four specialised Universities of Technology, as well as three Universities of Agriculture. About seven States also established their own Universities during this period. The total of 15 constitutes the third generation Universities in Nigeria.
From 1992 to 2022, additional 192 Universities have been established. This brings the total number of licensed Universities in Nigeria to about 217 as of today: 49 Federal; 57 State; and 111 Private. The growth from five full-fledged Universities as at 1962 to about 214 by mid-2022 is relatively phenomenal. Even more remarkable is the exponential growth in student enrolments: from 104 in 1948 (the foundation students of UCI drawn from Yaba Higher College), to about 2000 in 1962 and to about 2.2 million in 2020. This expansion in the number of universities, should in the normal course of events portend good, especially in relation to providing the much-needed access to the teeming population of persons increasingly seeking university education in Nigeria. However, it has turned out to compound the challenges that have come to bedevil the university system, particularly in the last three decades.
Once there were Universities
Before I highlight these challenges, it is pertinent to underline the fact that the Nigerian university system had made laudable strides in the first three decades of its existence, from 1960 to the beginning of the 1990s. Its “system integrity” was palpable and widely acknowledged. And, the “productivity” of its quality delivery was a notable factor in national development.
As the National Universities Commission (NUC) (2019, pxi) testified a few years ago,
The early decades of the Nigerian university system were characterised by impressive achievements. Graduates from the system were reputed nationally and globally for skills that tilted them high up on the relevance scale. Research output from the system was adjudged about the most impactful in solving national, regional and global challenges facing the society.
Those were the glorious early years, when strong political will and determined institutional leadership for effectual university education held sway. The pre-civil war years witnessed massive investment in education. They were the years of high hopes and great dreams for the future of Nigeria. The ruling elite competed among themselves on the provision of infrastructural facilities and expansion of social amenities; and various governments boasted of education as taking the ‘lion share’ of budgetary allocation (Babarinde, 2016, pp15-16).
In the 1970s and 1980s, the first generation Universities were centres of academic excellence. Graduates of the university education led in the (re)construction of critical national assets and the productivity of various companies in the manufacturing sector; and a Nobel Laureate as well as many international award-winning scholars littered the system’s landscape. Little wonder, expatriates flocked to the system, both to educate and be educated; and foreigners undertook medical tourism to University Teaching Hospitals; among other laurels.
Decline of University Education: Leadership Complicity
In the last 30 years, the narrative has changed. System failure has become rampant. Productivity has dwindled. The trend smacks of an agenda to systematically destroy the Nigerian university system. Consequently, a general decline now pervades the system. It is a classic case of how are the mighty fallen!
This week, a clergy (Bishop Dr David O.C. Onuoha) remarked about the parlous state of public schools in one of the States in Nigeria. What he said can, with necessary adaptations, capture the state of decline in university education:
We decry the state of public schools… The level of decay of facilities as well as the near absence of teaching and learning in these schools… is intolerable, unjustifiable, inexcusable, regrettable and unacceptable. When one remembers that these schools were once the pride of the various communities that had them, as well as the hope for guaranteed future for both the pupils and the entire society, one cannot but nurse a sense of pain, regret and loss, as to why successive administrations… have sustained this criminal negligence of the most critical sector of human society (Sunday Vanguard, June 19, 2022, p18)
The NUC (Ibid, p14) had identified and ranked about 12 items in the challenges that now confront university education in Nigeria. They are:
Inadequacies in facilities for teaching, learning and research
Inadequate funding
Deficit in teacher quality and quantity
Governance deficits
Depressed quality of graduates
Inadequacies in access
Deficiencies in research and post graduate training
Academic corruption and other social vices
Regulation by NUC and other professional bodies
Promoting ICT-driven universities
Fostering skills development and entrepreneurship
Gender issues.
A core argument in this Lecture is that, these items are artefacts of leadership failure with regard to university education in Nigeria. They are intricately interlinked – in genesis and manifestations, but I will select a few to illustrate the failure principally at two levels of leadership: political and institutional.
Political leadership:
In the last 30 years, it is the failure of the political leadership that has plunged university education in Nigeria into several challenges, including the funding crisis; inadequacies in access as well as facilities for teaching, learning and research; and deficiencies in research and post graduate training. In the mid-1985s, governments in Nigeria took International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans and implemented its structural adjustment programmes. They did so in a manner that seriously devalued and defunded higher education. Although the strategy was upturned in the early 1990s, the misadventure had gone far enough to foster the destruction of the then outstanding educational systems in Nigeria.
The unfettered political interference, under the guise of necessary structural adjustments, resulted in, among other things, some Professors being made political Vice Chancellors and their professorial positions were politically influenced. The ensuing suppression of university autonomy, the silencing of intellectual voices and the unpredictable salary environment, gave rise to a mass exodus of many brilliant lecturers from the Nigerian university system. Some left to join the rat race in the business world and others left Nigeria.
The IMF influence also encouraged the Nigerian government and members of the ruling class to make Nigeria a dumping ground for imported products in the name of economic liberalisation, away from the then prevailing indigenisation policy. Coupled with the Nigerian government then preferring to patronise foreign firms, even in simple projects, allegedly in return for 10% kickback, local industries lost the market to support employment of university graduates and Universities lost the opportunities to hone in on locally developed technologies or tap into technology transfer by foreign firms manufacturing in Nigeria.
The failure of the political leadership at the federal level, which has contributed to the loss of vitality in university education, also manifested in unstable ministerial appointments for education. From 1960 to 2022, a period of 62 years, there have been 46 ministers (26 – senior and 20 – junior). The senior ministers served on average for two years, four months. Between 2001 and 2010, a period of 9 years, it was even a quicker turnover. There were 8 senior ministers, serving on average for one year, one month. This has severely inhibited continuity in implementation of university improvement (revitalisation) plans.
Since each [minister] wanted to be remembered for improvement plans literally named after him or her, the education space became littered with a staccato of such plans which were hardly scratched by way of implementation (NUC, 2019, p10).
The reason for this scenario is not far-fetched. Most of the appointed ministers where charactered as “political party lackeys”. The few who could be described as “expert education ministers”, and under whom education was said to have fared well, include: Aja Nwachuku, 1958-1965; Professor Jubril Aminu, 1985-1989; Professor Babs Fafunwa, 1990-1992; and Professor Sam Egwu, 2008-2010 (see Ekundayo, 2019).
Recently, Olukoju (2022) provided a critical view on the political leadership – governments at the State level who are creating multiple universities and converting colleges of education and polytechnics into full-fledged universities, without rigorous planning. This, he argued, “amounts to an abusive of the university system and a lack of understanding of how it works. And, that the approach stands in stark contrast to “the planning, execution and funding that produced the regional universities at Nsukka, Ile-Ife and Zaria” in the early 1960s.
He further averred that “it appears that the decreeing of universities is a distribution of political patronage completely at variance with the idea of a university”. He called them “toy universities” sited in politically strategic places to win elections. The universities may get infrastructure from TETFund, but how about the paucity of qualified staff – holders of PhD degrees, grant winners and scholars with reputable publications? And, where are the viable strategies for absorbing the graduates into gainful employment, in the face of mounting rates of graduate unemployment and unemployability?
The most visible symbol of political leadership failure which has sent university education in Nigeria into a tailspin, is in the area of funding. In the last 30 years, the percentage of the budget allocated to education annually has been abysmally low. For instance, as against the UNESCO recommended 15%-26%, the federal allocations in the last seven years, ranged downwards from 10.7% to 5.6%, averaging 6.5% (i.e. a total of about N3.6 trillion for education out of about N55.4 trillion).
It is trite knowledge that the incessant strikes that have further bastardised university education in Nigeria, emanated from this issue of inadequate funding of public universities and lackadaisical attitude of the political leadership to implement agreements around funding. Since the Academic Staff Union of Universities was established in 1978 to represent academic staff in Nigeria’s universities, there have been several strikes, disrupting the academic calendar: 16 times since 1999, spanning over at least 50 months. That is, 4 years, two months of university education time lost to strikes in 23 years. As Bishop Dr David O.C. Onuoha observed recently:
If there is anything an undergraduate in any public university in Nigeria is sure of today, it is that he/she will not graduate on schedule, no thanks to incessant strike actions that presently define the university system in Nigeria… The inability or unwillingness of government and the university staff to find a lasting solution to the unstable academic calendar… is not only inimical to the future of our youths, but may also be part of the reasons for the worsening insecurity in our land (Ibid).
Laying the responsibility squarely at the feet of governments, Professor Olukoju (2022) argued pointedly that, by and large, strikes are indicative of a political leadership that is “not alive to its best interests of providing a good university education system that runs on a stable calendar and produces high quality, globally competitive products”.
Institutional leadership
A deeper reflection on the decline of university education in Nigeria must, of necessary, bring one face to face with the failure at the institutional leadership level as well.
A 19th century Oxford University academic, Professor John Henry Newman, once painted a picture of the “University” as the place in which the intellect may safely range and speculate, where inquiry is pushed forward, discoveries verified and perfected, rashness rendered innocuous and error exposed by the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge. It is a place where the professor becomes eloquent, and is a missionary and a preacher, displaying [their] science in its most complete and most winning form, pouring it forth with zeal of enthusiasm, lighting up [their] own love of it in the breasts of [their] hearers… It is a place which wins the admiration of the young by its celebrity, kindles the affections of the middle-aged by its beauty, and rivets the fidelity of the old by its associations. It is a seat of wisdom, a light of the world… (see Ogunruku, 2019, p115).
Describing ‘university’ as a seat of wisdom and a light of the world, is a loaded code for seeing university education as the crucible in which practical solutions and luminary leadership are formed. In the last decade or so, I have focused on this perspective of university in my intellectual outputs and professional practice as a university administrator. This is the backdrop our decision to recast ADUN’s vision as a Global University Educating Luminary Leaders (GUELL).
At the intersection of this ‘theory and praxis’, I have established that university education is uniquely essential to the production of righteous graduates who would be competitive locally and globally; pursue inexplicable goodness to make nations great; and contribute more broadly to the upliftment of humanity in general through such things as innovative and safe products as well as excellent and beneficial services.
Regrettably, the failure of the institutional leadership of universities to enact this core corporate objective, has compounded the challenges bedevilling university education. In particular, such failure gives rise to deficits in teacher quality and quantity, lack of entrepreneurship, depressed quality of graduates, as well as academic corruption and other social vices.
Talking about academic corruption and other social vices, part of the lamentations over the dwindling fortunes of university education is that, whereas the institutional leadership in the universities of the 1960s, 70s and 80s enforced godly values and modelled uprightness in offices and classrooms, such leadership in the last 30 years has abdicated this responsibility. By so doing, they have allowed the ills of admission racketeering, cultism, sexual harassment, ‘sex-for-marks’ and exam malpractices or purchase of degrees/certificates in cash or in kind without mastering what it takes to be worthy of the degree/certificates, to thrive. That leadership failure has betrayed their institutions and exerted additional toll on the running down of the university education.
Leadership Needed for Revitalising University Education
Let me now turn to the type of leadership needed to revitalise university education in Nigeria.
Revitalisation presupposes a lost ‘vitality’ that needs to be restored. The nostalgia today is that there was once a virile university education in Nigeria; and that there will be no hope for a thriving country until such education is re-enacted with all its development-oriented capabilities. The core of my argument in this Lecture has been that a type of leadership destroyed that education; and that it will take another type of leadership to revitalise it. Thus, the question that guides this section of my lecture is this: what type of leadership can deliver university education in Nigeria from the body of death that has been placed on it in the last 30 years?
At the political leadership level, it has been observed that since the 1980s, about 20 university system improvement plans had been proposed but never implemented. The NUC (2019, pp9-10) found that
the major challenge to implementation is the inability of the political actors to be faithful to the recommendations they willingly endorsed. This lack of political will has caused many a “Blueprint” to pick up dust on the shelves and turn brown for lack of attention to their implementation. Another challenge is the overly ambitious targets in the improvement plan. A third reason… is ego trip of political actors who want to be credited with specific programmes and projects in the university education sub-sector; [in such a situation], the belief in the continuity of administration is not upheld… A fourth reason is the short tenures of many ministers of education.
On display in this finding, were symbols of manipulative leadership: proposing without implementing, failure to exercise political will, ambitiousness, egotism or self-aggrandisement, and short-termism. The ensuing circus show, lacking in sincerity of purpose, went on while the university system spiralled through a slope of decline.
In the last decade of the period under reference, the Buhari Administration seemed to have changed this course, when he made a commitment to reverse the decline in 2016. Shortly after, the Honourable Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, who has lasted for almost seven years in that portfolio (since November, 2015), directed the new Executive Secretary, Professor Abubakar Adamu Rasheed, to work within the Ministerial Strategic Plan 2016-2019 to begin the process of developing a Blueprint for rapid revitalisation of university education in Nigeria (Ibid, pxi). Professor Rasheed, in turn, tasked the NUC Strategy Advisory Committee (STRADVCOM) to develop the Blueprint.
The ensuing document presented a five-year revitalisation plan (2019-2023). It determined and ranked 12 challenges facing the university system at this time. Further, it distilled 10 strategic goals – including increased access, curriculum relevant for the production of high-level human resources, upgrade of facilities for teaching, learning and research, increase in globally competitive productivity by scholars, reduction of academic corruption, and enactment of a sustainable funding model for universities. The cost of implementing these goals was put at N823 billion, shared as 75% from proprietors; 20% from IGR; and 5% from other sources, including alumni, endowment and donors.
Okebukola (2019) likened this Blueprint, which is part of what he christened – the Rasheed Revolution in the Nigerian university system – to the Marshall Plan of 1947 that was enacted to rebuild the economies and spirit of western Europe which were battered during the World War II. He said the Blueprint has been receiving global endorsement and support, such as the French Development Agency (AFD) and the World Bank offering miscellaneous support for the implementation of the ten strategic goals of the Blueprint.
Of a truth, a critical look at the Blueprint will show that it is a well-thought-out revitalisation plan which, if fully implemented, can reasonably create the stable conditions for university education to thrive again in Nigeria. However, the budget allocation to education by the Buhari administration since 2016 seems to be telling a different story. The allocation has varied from year to year between 5.6% and 7.9%, averaging about 6.5%, which is far below the UNESCO benchmark of 15%-26%. Further, it is not clear from the Blueprint whether the N620 billion share of the N823 billion cost of implementation that accrues to the Federal Government is part of, or additional to, the annual budget allocation that is already far low – not to talk of the actual releases which are lower still.
To demonstrate that the Buhari administration has acted bona fide in relation to this unique revitalisation plan, it should ensure that the Blueprint is passed into law. That was one action the US President Harry Truman took, i.e. getting the recovery plan signed into law, which made it possible for the Marshall Plan to be very successful.
No matter how robust and genuine the interventions by the political leadership might be, university education could still continue to flounder in distressing challenges if the institutional leadership within the Universities fails to tow the path of virtuousness.
An institutional leadership will be considered virtuous if it manifests courage, temperance, justice, prudence, humanity and integrity. I dealt with these variables in my work, Audacity of Leading Right: An Odyssey Towards Virtuous Leadership (Omaji, 2015b). The work is essentially the story of how I led Salem University, Lokoja, Kogi State, as its pioneer Vice Chancellor, to keep transformational education in the University and to keep academic corruption as well as other social vices out of the University. To help us achieve a similar outcome at ADUN, we have deployed virtuous leadership under the mantra or doctrine of “doing the right thing, the right way, at the right time and for the right reasons”.
A few months into my pioneer Vice Chancellorship at ADUN, one of the proprietors who had noticed this doctrine at work, sent me an article by Bolanle Bolawole, titled, “OAU: Where Integrity is Two-edged Sword”. The story was about the then Vice Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Professor Ogunbodede. After reading it, I sent a message to this member of ADUN proprietor team, saying: “Great read, my Admiral. I can plead mea culpa to an alter ego in Ogunbodede”.
In Professor Ogunbodede, I saw a practical illustration of the virtuous institutional leadership we are trying at ADUN, which we have come to believe would clean the Augean stable that has been suppressing the enviable university education that Nigeria had experienced in the 30 years after independence. The parallels with our own leadership approach are so overwhelming, that I have taken liberty to reproduce much of what Bolawole wrote about VC Ogunbodede.
When Professor Ogunbodede was announced as the Vice Chancellor, “Ife went gaga with joy” and the atmosphere at his installation was ‘carnival-like”. I can relate to that at my appointment. As Bolawole further recounted,
Professor Ogunbodede was “a workaholic, principled man and stickler for excellence, regardless whose ox is gored. He would listen, express sympathy but stick to his gun once he is certain it is the right thing to do… Ife was up for a great turn-around with Ogunbodede in the saddle. Three years down the road, he has not disappointed. As VC, Ogunbodede has worked tirelessly to clean the Great Ife’s Augean stable. Fortunately, he has had a good Council to work with.
Again, I can relate to all this. ADUN community knows that our leadership is driven by ADUN’s Motto of Excellence in Education; and that we are very firm with our leadership mantra.
We are told that Ogunbodede’s mantra is: Once due process is adhered to with honour and integrity, everything else will fall in their rightful places and Great Ife will regain its lost glory and occupy its exalted position in the comity of Ivory Towers. He was nicknamed: “that VC who does not bend”! Clearly, I can relate to this attitude as well.
Ogunbodede had zero tolerance for such nonsense or vices as ‘sex-for-marks’; and he had occasion to unmask, disgrace and hand over to the police three errant Ife lecturers who engaged in the vice. Professor Ogunbodede insisted that it is only when such cases are firmly treated in an open and transparent manner that the cankerworm can be stamped out and the university’s good image preserved. Interestingly, my administration has recently terminated three lecturers, who were found culpable for sexual harassment of students, for the same reasons of running a university free from such contaminations.
Bolawole argued that, by and large, Ife has been the better for Ogunbodede’s type of leadership. This remains our unbounded aspiration for ADUN; and my leadership team is committed to prosecuting it unapologetically.
The central point in all that has been said in the foregoing, is that: with adequate resourcing by all the stakeholders, particularly the political leadership, and the deployment of virtuous leadership at the institutional (governance) level, “our universities can truly be the citadel of learning they are meant to be”.
Concluding Remarks
As UIAA Asaba would appreciate intimately, it is as emblematic of the decline in education, as it is disturbing to our sensibilities, that your Alma Mater (UI) that produced a Nobel Laureate (Wole Sonyinka) in 1986 is not among the top 500 Universities in the world today. Needless to say, the same university education had also produced the likes of Chinua Achebe, Professor Awojobi, Dr Bala Usman and several other great graduates. Many now see that same education as a bastardised version of the ‘education legacy’ that the founding fathers of Nigeria bequeathed in their own days.
As I have outlined in this Lecture, the dynamics of the Nigerian university system, is intricately linked with the leadership phenomenon. I stated at the beginning of this Lecture that everything rises, stands and falls on leadership. I had observed in a previous work that
Today, more than ever before in the history of humankind, the leadership question has become a matter of keeping a date with destiny. It is the difference maker between compromised destinies and fulfilled destinies. Individuals, organisations, communities or nations that fail to grapple with [this axiom], do so at their own peril. Such is the destiny-changing power of leadership that a thousand lions following a lamb as their arrowhead would always be defeated by a hundred lambs led by one lion… [W]hen it comes to leading [virtuously] to post a flourishing destiny in a corrupt world, it is the audacity of a fearless, ferocious and fervent lion that can sustain (Omaji, 2015b, px).
As we commit ourselves to revitalising university education in Nigeria so as to re-enact its full of vitality (in integrity, hope, aspiration and productivity), let us deliberately seek out the leadership (qua leadership) that can actualise our dream. Both the political leadership and institutional leadership must aspire to pursue virtuousness in their operations.
To capture the essence of this point of arrival, I invite you all to consider this syllogistic framework: Major premise – In all matters pertaining to revitalising university education, leadership is pre-existing and pre-eminent. Minor premise – When the virtuous are in leadership, university education rejoices; but when the wicked rule, university education mourns. Deduction – Therefore, to revitalise (make joyful) university education, we must put virtuous people in leadership at critical levels” (adapted from Omaji, 2019).
If there is any alumni association that can hold all of us accountable to this syllogism, it must the UIAA Asaba. You have the wherewithal – in membership, requisite resources and access to powers that be, to stand for the revitalisation of university education in Nigeria, and pressure all critical levels of relevant leadership to do same. You will make your Alma Mater proud if you discharge this responsibility with all the seriousness it deserves.
Thank you for the privilege to share my thoughts and for your invaluable attention.
Long live UI – the first and the best!
Long live ADUN, the upcoming best!!
Long live a revitalised university education in Nigeria!!
References
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Ekundayo, (2019) “Nigeria’s Education is in a Mess. Five things to Fix it”, Online, March 26, 2019.
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Onuoha, D. (2022) “Heartless Thieves: Nigeria’s money in 50 public officers’ hands can pay country’s debts, fund universities”, Sunday Vanguard, June 19, 2022. Pp18-19.
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