By Festus Ahon
PROFESSOR Victor Peretomode is the outgoing Provost of the Delta State University, Oleh campus. In this interview with newsmen, he spoke on his challenges and other issues.
Excerpts:

Sir, you are the Provost of Delta State University Oleh Campus. How has it been as a Provost?

As provost of the Delta State University Oleh Campus, it has been very challenging and interesting. I resumed duty here January 2nd 2007 and by December 31st this year my second tenure of two years would have been over. But so far so good, I am excited to have been sent here to be the Chief Executive of this school. The four years I have been here have been a very exciting experience.

What would you say are some of your challenges?

Prof. Victor Peretomode

When I came in first there were this porosity of the campus; our students were being attacked. Students who come to read on going back home they were being attacked. People were coming into the premises because the area was very porous.

There was no fence at all. They come through the left, the right and the centre so that was the first challenge. When I assumed duty, one of the things I did was to call the student union and the various unions; and I discussed with them and I specifically asked them to tell me the challenges of the campus, the problems of the campus and then the way forward.

They identified the problems and challenges and they also proffered solutions. So that served as a very useful guide to me. So one of the first things I therefore did was to see how we can prevent our students and staff from this frequent attack. When they are reading in the hall they attempt to steal handsets, dagger them and run away so I set in motion, through direct labour to see how we can construct this one kilometre fence running from the beginning of the campus to the other end in front. That was the first thing I did. The second one was the generator.

The generator we have has been in existence for the past 15 years and you will agree with me that with wear and tear over that period of time it was less of a generator that can serve a campus. I used my position and that position as the former commissioner representing Delta state in NDDC to attract and they were able to supply one new 500 KVA generator.

They did not only supply it, I also get them to connect it not only to install it but also to build a generator house.

Sir, you seem to have achieved a whole lot within just four years; can you tell us the magic wand?

One God, one with God is majority. But very importantly too, like what I said, the support and not only the support, I think the expectation was very high. I was former a Federal Commissioner, being the Delta State Commissioner on the Board of Niger Delta Development Commission.

Secondly, I am from Delta South and this university is located in Delta South, so much is expected, knowing my antecedents in NDDC up till now nobody since after I left there with due respect to them all, no one of them has achieved as much as I have achieved. So much was expected of me. So when I came here I knew that. I couldn’t afford to fail.

The Vice Chancellor that nominated me and appointed me here knows there were a lot of challenges here and that is why he sent me here. So, I came here I couldn’t possibly have done less.

The expectation of the people were high I knew that of myself, and moved importantly my experience, I am from a very humble background, humble family but I know that I have a philosophy in life and I think one of  the best things in life is to be given a task and to do it very well and have to bring to bear therefore my experience, my spirit of selflessness and bring my intellectual energy to bear. In my modest achievement, I really came to build upon what my predecessors  had achieved.

The law complex in the faculty of law has turned to be an abandoned project; what effort have you been able to make to get the state government to have it completed?

When I was mentioning my challenges and achievements, I didn’t quite mention it, but it is really a challenge and it is an area I will really say I have achieved because first this idea of law faculty complex was not there and then law faculty is known because our students have been performing very well in law school and there was no faculty.

So I have to appeal to a number of friends who are legislators in the State House of Assembly to assist and eventually it was now included in the budget and the contract was awarded. But before that, I had to fall back on my experience. If you are going to appeal, I knew the idea that I must get a law faculty before I leave here so what I did was to first of all get a Deltan an architect, who is in Benin to give us the drawing.

We had that drawing free so that was a major achievement you cannot quantity that if we were to pay, this campus can’t pay but because of my connection. I gave that to those who are interested in assisting the campus in the legislature so they put in the budget and that contract has been awarded but the contractor is not performing. If you have been reading the papers, you would have read that the contract, the legislative arm called for its cancellation so that they can award it to a more competent person.

In no distant date, I think by next year, work in that area will progress very fast. So that is one major challenge and one major achievement. The drawings are ready, the contract has been awarded and therefore one day, it will be completed.

How would you rate the academic performance of your students and what are you putting in place to ensure that their academic is improved on?

One other area of challenge is that of staffing. And if you look at the two faculties here in Oleh campus they are what I refer to as golden faculties’ very important faculties anywhere, the faculty of law, the group of learned people and the engineering. Tell me, even what the medical doctors use are  mostly designed by engineers and you need to get staff.

These are very specialized areas.

How do you get these staff?

It means as the head of the campus we will have to do a lot of social networking contacting people and so forth. It is not easy to attract a professor of law from another faculty, but here we were able to attract Prof. Festus Enerhi to this place.

And we have since been getting other people and we have really been attracting staff. You are aware that there is one Prof. Mrs. Isosi she just recently retired from Lagos State University. We attracted her here, she is with us and these are many other staff that we have attracted here. This is to boost the calibre of staff we have and we also have staff training programme for them now many of them have been promoted, to associate professors, senior lecturers, they have also obtained their PHD programme. We have a PHD programme here for them. Many of them have graduated from this Master and PHD.

Then in Engineering, it will gladden your heart to learn that the university had awarded a number of them financial aid or scholarship to go and study overseas and I think two of them are from Engineering. The third one just had disappointment because he was denied VISA.

This are two others that will be going so we are doing all we can to beef up not only the number but also the quality of our staff in both law and Engineering. And that is improving the quality of reading but I must assure you that the quality of our law students is very high most of them come out in flying colours in law schools not just Oleh here.

When they leave here and compete with other many of them have been wining awards in law school. And in Engineering they are also pulling their weight. They are already designing things which they are even using in Oleh campus and many other places so I think the two faculties are wonderful faculties.