Abdul Ganiyu Ambali, a professor of veterinary medicine, resumed duties as the new vice-chancellor of the University of Ilorin in October, 2012. In this interview with ABDULLAHI OLESIN, he speaks on the challenges of his new office, his goals and sundry issues in the nation’s educational system.

What are the challenges encountered by your administration?

My first challenge is that I have lost my weekends. Hitherto, my weekends used to be spent in my house, visiting one or two friends and then using the major part of it to rest at home. But now I have found out that the job 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 find 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 that is geared towards contributing to human development, 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.

What caused the recent disturbances in the university’s campus?

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 increased lately. But we have taken measures and employed more hands. We have more security agents patrolling the troubled spots that we have identified on 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.

What do your think are the expectations of the university’s community from your administration?

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 laboratory equipment for research is 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 about furthering education to improve human capacity of the staff. The university has started training its academic staff, especially those we newly employed, those working in the laboratory, administrative staff, especially the registry, the security and all those working at the Internet centre. We will give them the 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 (God willing) 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.

Are you embarking on 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 projects by the federal ministry of education which came out some 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 and I will be going to Abuja in the next 24 hours to collect the necessary document and thereafter, the contractors will start their work.

We are still awaiting the approval of the Faculty of Arts. 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 laboratory 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, they 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 he’s linking us up with Harvard and Kansas State universities. We are at advanced stage of collaboration which will no doubt yield a lot of resources and other inputs from our partners. They have indicated their willingness to assist both in terms of supplies and manpower training. We look forward to that.

How are you tackling the problem of acute shortage of accommodation facilities for students on the campus?

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 build, operate and transfer (BOT) arrangement. I use this opportunity to thank and acknowledge the contribution of our societies, especially the societies on campus. Many of them have erected facilities  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 that before the end of the session or early next session, we will have more accommodation facilities for our undergraduates and post graduates students. We are still going to continue to encourage people because right now the university has a population of 34,000 students and the facilities that we have on campus now can only accommodate 3,000. So you can imagine the gap between the needs and the available facilities. 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.

What strategies have you put in place to check the activities of Fulani herdsmen who normally pass through the campus?

The activities of the herdsmen are part of our security challenges. And, you know, when you have these kinds of problem, then 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 borders 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 borders effectively. That is when we will be able to draw a line between us and them, but right now because of the porosity of our borders, 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 the local people. You find out that in some places where land has been allocated to the university, the people there still refuse to leave the place.

How do you think the falling standard of education in the country could be arrested?

The quality of education is not as bad as we think. I was interacting with one former VC who stays in the US and he said he found most of our doctors practising 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 practise there, they subject you to their medical council examinations. Which means that our doctors that are there have been undergoing this examination and have been passing them. So if the quality was bad, that wouldn’t happen. Of course, we cannot generalise,  and that is why the Nigerian Universities Commission (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 schools in the country, and, as you know, it is garbage in, garbage out, good quality in, better product out and vice versa. This means whatever is happening in the university comes from down under; 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 states and local governments to improve the quality they are giving the university. I know some state governments are doing their best. The University of Ilorin or any university for that matter has a defined catchment place to serve, which means majority of our products should come from that particular locality.

The quality of the products that we have in those states affects the university. I personally want to encourage our state governments to please improve the quality of products they are giving us in the university.