By BASHIR ADEFAKA

WHEN he sits back in his Olusegun Obasanjo Hilltop GRA, Abeokuta home and recounts the many blessings that have accrued to the Crescent University, Abeokuta when he sold all his property to establish less than ten years ago, former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Prince Abdul-Jabbar Bolasodun Ajibola, SAN, CFR, LLD says, “alhamdulillahi (that is, I give praise to Allah).”

Bola Ajibola, today, is renowned world class figure having served as World Court Judge at The Hague and had taken part in many adjudications affecting many great nations of the world.  He was also the Nigerian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom just like he was Vice President of the World Bank, New York, in the United States of America.

Prince Bola-Ajibola

Of all the achievements, the one that interests the legal luminary, who was pioneering President of the Nigeria Bar Association, NMA, Vanguard learnt, was the event that led to deserving the honourary award of the LL.D. conferred on him by the prestigious University of Buckingham, United Kingdom.

He said, “I have four children that went to that university and the authorities were not settled until they sent for the parent of those children.  They said their moral and moral spiritual attachments to academic performances were excellence and that these could not have come from other than the home.

“When they came for me, they met me at The Hague and so they invited me for appreciation of being a good father.  They gave me the LL.D. honorary consal of the University of Buckingham presented to me by the British first and, so far, only female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher,” he told Vanguard as he woke on that morning into a day he described as “day of publicity.”

It was a day the first major achievements of Progress Report Newspaper and Radiance magazine by students of the Department of Mass Communication of his school, Crescent University Abeokuta and many other products by students of the school were presented to him.  Such achievements produced from scratch to the peak of the process and which had generated accolades from both National Universities Commission, NUC and other stakeholders in the universities community demonstrated that the university has more than just theory but also practical evidence of what it is up to.

But Bola Ajibola has a background that ostensibly orchestrated this moral quality that he has transferred to his children.  It is the Owu home, where he comes from and the Baptist Boys High School, BBHS, Abeokuta operated by missionaries in those days, where discipline and morals were non-negotiable. Owu, Abeokuta is an ancient Egba community where name matters.

Again the BBHS where he attended, moral and spiritual excellence was issue. You were either a good character or you were thrown out of the school.  Anything short of good moral qualified a student for dismissal.  Cudgel and carrot style was it at BBHS and that can, today, be seen in many products of the former Christian missionary school like the Olusegun Obasanjos, the Bola Ajibolas himself, the G. O. K. Ajayis, the Oba Olusanya Dosunmus, etc.  They are great people who in their respective fields have made Nigeria great.

Ajibola, juxtaposing this beautiful upbringing of the past with what he seeks to achieve with Crescent University Abeokuta, said, “What I set out to achieve with the Crescent University Abeokuta is to train Nigerians to be good moral, fearful of God and still perform excellently well in the academic.  It has been with me since 64 years ago during my days at the Baptist Boys High School, BBHS, Abeokuta. We were trained on the platform of good moral and fear of God and it was cudgel and carrot style.  Carrot means they would tell us: be good children, do not steal, do not be criminals, respect people and worship God.  And cudgel means any slight default on this expectation, you were out for ever.

“At Crescent University our watchword is in the moral and fear of God.

That we impact in all our students. We are not rich but our riches abound in the fact that all our products are now being marvelled nationally and internationally. We achieved this feat through employed guidance and counsellors, who guide and advise the students in the academics and Imams, who preach to them.  Our lead Imam was purposely brought from Egypt and he does no more or less than train the studentsto fear God and have good morals.

Academic failure

“Our students repeat not only because of academic failure but because they fail in their moral and spiritual dispositions, which we have now built into a course called Global Citizenship and which must be passed compulsorily.  You must pass in Crescent University as human being and not as brilliant beast.

“This is new dimension in education that we want our students to imbibe and we in our own way are not only doing that but also, we are achieving it.  So much that people are now bringing their children to us to undergo the kind of training that we offer in our school. That is what we do differently, which we call academic plus. “We have duty to train the whole Nigerian students. Our good example and disciplinary policies on students also extend to lecturers and other staff.  We send lecturers away if they fail to toe our

disciplinary and moral lines.  Recently we sacked six lecturers over bribe-related offences.  We do not condone that here.

“We have invisible earning in the sense that we are poorer but we are good materials anywhere you find us in the world.  We receive accolades from Scotland, Jordan, the United States of America, mention it, over our products that are there pursuing their postgraduate programmes.  We do not say anything but we do many things,” Ajibola said.

Entrepreneurship policy

At the Crescent University, emphasis is not only on the brain but they have state-of-the-art equipment which backup the brilliance that has been attested to, even by the National Universities Commission, NUC. As a result of this, the Department of Mass Communication of the university, under its entrepreneurship policy has successfully put its students through in newspaper and magazine publishing from news gathering through writing, editing, production and printing. All done by students and the output, Progress Report and Radiance, respectively, are not only excellent but also have hit the reading public at given prices.

When asked about the prospects of the school, Head of Department, Mass Communication, Mr. Kola Adesina said, “Any university worthy of note must be able to answer the following questions satisfactorily: Are your programmes accredited by the National University Commission, NUC?

Are your products getting employed in the right places and are these products getting admission into postgraduate studies both home and abroad? Crescent University is able to answer all the three questions in affirmative with incontrovertible evidence to show for it.

“In this department, our overall last accreditation score by the Nigerian Universities Commission was 90 percent; we were also scored95.7 percent in academic content.  We also have evidence that some of our students are being retained where they had their youth service. One of our first class graduates was allowed to lecture 300 and 400 levels in a leading federal university during her youth service. 

Another of our products, Rafiat Gawat, who graduated with a first class in 2011 served with Sterling Bank and was retained by her service branch and headquarters came and took her to take part in starting the social media section of the bank.

Social media

“From Sterling Bank she was offered a scholarship by the Lagos State government to study at Robert Gordon University in Scotland.  More so, because of the exploits of Gawat, other products of the Department have been offered employment by the bank.

“We have it on record that 300 students sat for the MSc entrance examination a few months ago, into the University of Lagos.  Among those offered admission after a highly competitive examination were all five graduates of Mass Communication from Crescent University Abeokuta who took part.  The good thing about this is that they had to sit for entrance examinations, so, it is not just bring your certificate and get admitted.

“Some of our graduates have obtained masters degrees from Pan Atlantic University in Nigeria, University of Bedfordshire, UK, and University of Texas, US and so on.

On the issue of entrepreneurship, a graduate of the department already owns a thriving online fashion design outfit with staff,” said Mr. Adesina, who said he kept talking about his university’s products because anyone that could not showcase his products was not proud of them. The school single-handedly founded by Prince Bola Ajibola and for less than ten years now under the executive leadership of Professor Kehind Okeleye as Vice Chancellor, Mr. Adeshina told Vanguard, has its products as its best form of advertising.