Professor Abdul-Ganiyu Ambali is the 9th Vice Chancellor of the University of Ilorin. He stepped in at a time a university had recorded many feats among universities in the country and abroad, under his predecessor. His assumption of office left observers of the trend of events with the poser can he raise the bar above his predecessor. In his maiden official outing with the press in Ilorin, since assumption of office, Ambali spoke on issues bordering on the university and the country’s education sector. UMAR BAYO ABDULWAHAB was there. Excerpts:

Challenges

My first challenge is that I have lost my weekend. Hitherto my weekend used to be spent in my house; visiting one or two friends and ten use the major part of it to rest at home. But now I have found out that the position of the VC is almost 24/7 because things are very dynamic and nothing is static. You leave the campus around 3:30pm and the next minute you found out that your attention is needed. Most of the time I spend the weekend at the office. But nevertheless, I have enjoyed my new assignment because wherever you are, anything you do is geared towards having that is usually very satisfying. So despite the challenges, I am happy to be there, to serve people and I hope and continue to do it better.

Resurgence of cultism in Ilorin

On the little disturbance we are having, yes it is very unfortunate but we have taken various measures to tackle the problems. You will agree with me that the problem has been with us for a while only that the frequency of their occurrence has been increased of recent. But we have taken measures and employ more hands. We have more security agents patrolling the troubled spots that we have identified on the campus. For the last six months, we have really reinforced the security strength of the staff on campus. We are quite comfortable now since we have staff that cooperate with us who are ready to tackle the problem. We are on top of it.

Whenever you have a set up like a university like this and with all our borders, we have to constantly be on our guard. We have reinforced the security strength of the university and we hope and pray that we will not witness such reoccurrence again. Things are under control and we are on top of the situation. We have gotten the assurance of the security agencies in town and they have increased their surveillance of the place.

Expectations

You will discover that since we started, we met peace and tranquility on campus and I am very determined to consolidate on that. Again to assure our people on and outside campus that lab equipment for research are being given serious attention. In fact government has promised to assist us in achieving this. We know that it is not only about facilities but also of furthering education to improve human capacity of the staff. The university has started training for its academic staff, especially those we newly employed, those working in the lab, administrative staff, especially the registry , the security and all those working at the Internet centre. We will give them opportunity to advance their study for the growth of the University. We have started that and in the next one or two weeks others will follow because we are having the training in batches.

And insha Allah in six months to a year from now, staff of the University would have improved the efficiency of their work with the requisite training we want to carry out for them. The training will not only be done in the university. The school will also exploit ways of sponsoring the staff abroad also.

New projects

We are supposed to start three projects for which the faculty of Education and that of Arts are included. The multi-purpose hall is the third. In respect of the money for these projects, you should know that we have various categories of approval.

There are some approvals that are beyond the limit of Council and some beyond the limit of management. These three projects are both above the limit of management and council approval. Based on this, we have to take the document to the federal Ministry of education for approval. I am happy to tell you that approval has been given for the take-off of two of the project by the federal ministry of education which came out about two weeks ago. As a matter of fact, we are expecting the financial backing from TETFUND any moment from now. The project will surely take off in the next one week.

We are still awaiting the approval of the Faculty of Art. That of the education multi-purpose hall will take off next week. Also, Council has also approved the University of Ilorin water project which will take off any moment from now. I assure you that within the next three months, the water that will be taken within the campus and to serve our friends will come from the University of Ilorin itself.

We also have the central lab project and we are on top of it. Soon, the process will be completed and we hope that before the end of the year, it would have been in place. We have other projects that we are hoping that before the end of the academic session, it will be on or completed. I can assure you that we have good hands and the financial backing is there. What is left now is for us to be able to identify good contractors that will finish these projects within a record time.

Again, we are at advanced stage and talking with a lot of partners and just of recently we had a contact in the US and his linking us up with Harvard and Kansas state universities. We are at advance stage of collaboration which will no doubt yield a lot of resources and other imputes from our partners. They have indicated their willingness to assist both in terms of supplies and manpower training. We look forward to that.

Accommodation challenges

Accommodation of students is one of our priority areas. The government has given us the go ahead to encourage the Nigerian public to come and partner with us under the BOT arrangement. I use this opportunity to thank and acknowledge the contribution of our society, especially the society on campus. Many of them have erected facility to accommodate the students and even one of the buildings was opened to students. Right now we are talking with almost three developers who are ready to come and invest within the university. And I am sure before the end of the session or early next session, we will have more accommodation of our undergraduates and post graduates students. We are still going to continue to encourage people because right now the University has a population of about 34,000 students and the facilities that we have on campus now can only accommodate just 3,000. So you can imagine the gap between the needs and the available facility. We are still going to encourage and partner with the public to come and build more hostels to accommodate students on campus because it is better and safer for students to be on campus than to be renting houses outside. Within the campus they are under our control but once they are outside, we have limited jurisdiction. We hope and pray that more people will heed our call to come and build more hostels within the campus.

Incursion by herdsmen

The activities of the herdsmen are part of our security challenges and you know when you have them, you now have to use your exposure and administrative know how to tackle them. It’s part of the security challenges facing the nation and Ilorin is part of it. We will continue to dialogue with them and eventually, I know our boarders are going to be secured. Every year, we are increasing the length of our fences and we are going to embark on that also until we are able to secure our boarders effectively. That is when we will be able to draw a line between us and them but right now because of the porous nature of our boarders, they still come in occasionally and you know that wherever grass is available they go for it. But we are working on it and in the next couple of years, we are going to achieve it. As a matter of fact even last month during the committee of vice chancellors meeting in Abuja, this was one of the issues discussed because almost everywhere you have universities, the security challenges are there. Here, our challenge is that of the herdsmen, in some other universities, the challenge is incursion by their people. You find out that where in some where land has been allocated to the university, the people there still refuse to leave the place.

Decline in the quality of university education or product

The quality of education is not as bad as we think. I was interacting with one former VC who stays in the US and said he found most of our doctors practicing there. If our education is bad, the people in the US will not recruit them. Once you don’t finish your MBBS in the UK and you want to practice there, they subject you to their medical council exam. Which means our doctors that are there have been undergoing this exam and been passing it. So if the quality was bad, that wouldn’t happen. Of course, we cannot generalize and that is why the NUC and other professional bodies are constantly monitoring and accrediting programmes in the university.

Again, if you have well trained and competent teachers, the quality of the product will improve. We have to also take cognizance of the fact that universities are getting their students from the product of secondary school in the country. and as you know. Garbage in, garbage out, good quality in, better product out and vice versa. This means whatever is happening in the university, we are just making use of what we are being fed with. The responsibility is not only that of the university because the university is coming in at the middle of the educational development of an individual. You have the nursery, the primary and the secondary before you come to the university. If we convince ourselves that the quality is declining, then let’s all watch what we are feeding the university with. It’s a collective responsibility. We have to encourage our state and local government to improve the quality they are giving the university. I know some state governments are doing their best. The University Ilorin or any university for that matter has a defined catchment place to serve which means majority of our product should come from that particular locality. The quality of the product that we have with in those state affect the university. I personally want to encourage our state governments to please improve the quality of products they are giving us in the university.