BY GABRIEL ENOGHOLASE
PROFESSOR Cordelia Agbebaku is the Vice-Chancellor of Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma, Edo State. Before her elevation to the position of vice-chancellor in February 2014, she was the acting Vice-Chancellor of the university for two years.

She became an Associate Professor in 1998 and a full Professor in 2003. She is the first alumnus of the university to occupy this position.
In this interview with Vanguard Learning, she speaks on the various challenges facing the university, perennial ASUU strike, how it can be averted and other issues.
Excerpts

What was your reaction to the confirmation of your appointment after serving as acting Vice-Chancellor for two years?
Naturally, I was very happy because it was a confirmation of the fact that I have done well on the job; and the governor recognises good work and merit when he sees one.

It seemed some people wanted to ensure that you were not confirmed…
That was why in the Governor’s speech during my confirmation, he made copious reference to the fact that some people tried to play the ethnic factor in the confirmation. From what he had seen, especially from the measure of stability in the university since I came on board, he did not allow ethnicity to play a part, but allowed merit to play its role in the confirmation exercise.

How were you able to achieve stability in the two years as an acting vice-chancellor knowing the university to be the hotbed of students’ and academics’ activism?
We would want to say that everybody in the campus contributed to the stability; the unions, the students as well as the management. It was a collective responsibility of all because they saw the need for the university to be stable and when you see good work, you recognise it. As you have rightly mentioned, AAU Ekpoma is the hotbed for intellectualism and so, they have the ability to decide between what is good and bad and objectivity.

Many people saw the need for us to put our house in order and work for the good of the university. So, that is what contributed to the stability and also, the management of the university operated an open door policy to ensure that those who meant well were free to offer their advice on how AAU can move forward and what we should do and should not do. The students on their part, saw the need to read their books.

I am not saying that there were no distractions, but the university enjoyed more stability. I would want to say that at the end of the day, the stability we enjoyed was the collective efforts of staff and students of AAU.

What are the major challenges facing AAU?
Right now, Nigeria is facing a lot of challenges and AAU is an integral part of Nigeria and some of these challenges are what we face – insecurity, financial problems, instability and the problem of strikes by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).

You will recall that last year, all the universities in the country were on strike including AAU, and that period sort of disrupted the smooth running of the university because it was a national strike. We had to stay away for six months. Then, there was the problem of detractors who will never see any- thing good in any person except themselves.

What do you think the government, unions and vice-chancellors can do in the resolution of the perennial strikes by ASUU?
I think government has a greater role to play because if you enter into an agreement, it behooves the parties to keep to the terms of the agreement. It is when you don’t keep to the terms of the agreement that you have problems. If you look at the last ASUU strike, it came up as a result of the Federal Government not playing its part after several reminders to do so from ASUU.

So if the government can keep to its part of the agreement with unions, there will be fewer problems. My advice is that if you cannot keep to the terms of agreements, you should lay the cards open on the table. Know what you are going into whether it is an agreement that you can implement. Do not enter into an agreement that you know deep down in your heart you are not going to implement. Tomorrow, problems arise.

And there is nothing that the vice-chancellors can do apart from making these problems known to the government. It will be really very difficult for vice-chancellors to stop strikes when there are agreements entered into that the government is not playing its part.

In what way would you say TETFUND has contributed to the growth of AAU?
As far as AAU is concerned, TETFUND has done well because on an annual basis, there is normal intervention from the body to federal and state universities and this depends on how far a university has utilised what it was given previously.

In AAU, we have a lot of TETFUND intervention projects to showcase. They include the construction of 3-in-1 300-capacity lecture theatre, procurement and supply of 969 volumes of books to AAU’s central library, procurement of brand new Toyota ambulance equipped with medical facilities at the health centre and so many others.

The only problem is in the Needs Assessment and the problem is that the Federal Government did not keep to its part of what it promised to give out as Needs Assessment. Letters were given out to the universities; one cannot really understand the sharing formula because some state universities got over N2 bn, some N500m and less. Even in the second letter of allocation, some state universities got over N1bn and here in AAU, only N370m was allocated to us while some state universities were given N1bn, N1.3 bn etc.

Will you ascribe this to your non- inflation of your needs and enrolment figures?
We cannot ascribe it to the above reasons because before TETFUND intervention, they, on their own, sent people to do on-the-spot assessment of the needs of the universities. They spent three or four days here and went round all the facilities; they saw the students, they saw our staff strength and so on. So, that was supposed to be their guide in assessing every need of the university.

How do you hope to solve the problem of dearth of infrastructure in AAU?
I appeal to other alumni of the university to take a cue from what Rev. Chris Oyakhilome (who recently donated a lecture theatre to the institution) and others that have contributed to the growth of the university within their limited resources. If you go through the campus, you will see the Central Laboratory for Science students; so I want them to come to the aid of the university and assist their alma mater.

What can you say about the accreditation of your courses by the National Universities Commission (NUC)?
Most of our courses have been accredited by the NUC. As you must know, most courses have accreditation for four or five years and most of the courses that were accredited about five years ago are due for accreditation this year. And the ones that were accredited in 2012 will be due for accreditation in the next three years; so we have most of our courses accredited.

However, there are few whose accreditations have been suspended and one of such is the Medical Laboratory Science and we are trying to put things in place. One of the reasons was that we did not have MoU with the Edo State Ministry of Health because the MoU we had only reflected the College of Medicine and there was no Nursing and Medical Laboratory Science.

So, we have met with the Board of Management of the Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital on the issue and the matter is before the Ministry of Health. As soon as we get response from them, the accreditation body would be invited for the accreditation of the course. The issue of the MoU was the major reason why the course was not accredited.

What efforts are being made to ensure that those courses due for accreditation are accredited?
We have made our request to government and we expect favourable reply.