By DAYO ADESULU

Foremost Nigerian trainer of vice-chancellors, provosts and rectors of tertiary institutions in Africa has stated that the vices bedevilling viability of the sector is more of politics than strike.

The Chairman, Executive Trainers Limited, Dr Ayo Ogunsan who decried the decadence said; “The day politics will be taken out of tertiary institutions in Nigeria, that is the day we will have an enduring sector. I don’t know the business of a president, governors and other politicians in the administration of education in a country. Politics should be separated from our education sector.”

According to him, education is an independent body which can be likened to investment.

Ogunsan who has trained over a million top tertiary executives in Nigeria urged the Federal Government to invest and remove their hands from education, adding that the governing councils of tertiary institutions should administer its affairs.

He, however, noted that the Federal Government should provide federal schools with fund needed to allow them generate more funds to run the institutions.

Ogunsan who believes that although the initiative might mean parents paying more,  it will, however, boost the sector. He said, “we are not asking the Federal Government to charge up to the private universities but to revamp the sector, parents need to pay more.”

Speaking at a media parley in Lagos to mark ETL’s fifth anniversary of successfully impacting the education sector, he lamented government’s policy on establishing more federal universities at the expense of quality. According to him, government keeps building more state universities instead of using the available resources to help the existing universities.

Asked the way out of the incessant strike in the education sector, the expert said he does not have a personal solution. However, he pointed out that what ETL does is to train those people who cause these problems to change their mindset and renew the mind of Nigerian top executives in our tertiary institutions.

Protest: Students protesting against ongoing nationwide strike, on Ikorodu Road, Lagos, yesterday.

Ogunsan who noted that due to his passion for viable education system in Nigeria, March this year, ETL was at New York with some top tertiary executives where strike was the issue addressed.

He, disclosed further that in September, the number one professor in Harvard, Professor Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School will train Nigerian Registrars. Also, same month, Nigerian vice- chancellors, provosts and rectors will participate in a training at Harvard titled Vision and Change where  Professor Emeritus will be facilitating the programme.

Explaining reasons for taking vice-chancellors, provosts, rectors and other top executives in tertiary institutions abroad for training, he said; “We take executives out of the shores of Nigeria at least for five days so they could be trained without distractions. So even if the Minister or the President needs their attention, they may still need to count the cost of re-booking their tickets and the stress involved.

Continuing, he said; “That was why we made up our mind to take them abroad. We designed a programme that the price is all-inclusive. At payment, the training cost, ticket, accommodation etc.,  are involved. We designed the training template so that we can control how people moved the funds.”

According to him, in 2009, ETL commenced the first training at Oxford Brook, UK which dealt with collaboration linkages between Nigerian tertiary institutions and their counterparts in the United Kingdom. He pointed out that about 30 vice -chancellors, rectors and provosts attended the training programme.

After the programme, ETL did a communique and follow-up on them to ensure that they put into practice all they were taught.

Ogunsan reiterated that there is hardly any education programme in Nigeria, Africa and the world where their representatives would not be there adding that ETL representatives were there at the Vice Chancellors’ meeting with the Minister of Education two weeks ago to contribute its quota

His words: “We are dealing with crisis management, strike, cultism and how to address the issues.

Many times, when the tertiary executives  meet us in foreign land, they say, they wish we are in government to make the changes and drive some of those good policies to the sector. However, we told them that we don’t need to before they feel our impact, because we have a platform where we can address it and we have been doing that.

We have trained over a million tertiary institutions executives. Our slogan is to advance higher education in Africa. We want to add value to the higher education in Nigeria.”

On the need to train the half baked graduates, he said, “ETL time table from June to December 2013 to May, 2014,  will be addressing how Nigeria institutions can produce employable graduates.

He reiterated that it will deal with active learning and helping students to succeed.

According to Ogunsan, the  decision to train students came as one of the vice chancellors in Nigeria  approached him in New York that we should come and train their students who are making problems on campus.

On entrepreneurship development, Ogunsan stated that ETL will be addressing that for the rest of the year. He said, “we have two programme on entrepreneurship. One in Ghana and the other in Kenya for polytechnics trying to design an entrepreneurship culture environment.

We have taking Bursars out for training to manage financial matter to teach how to source for fund in order to manage the system. We taught them how to generate money without relying on their federal allocations so that they can be competitive with global institutions.

The first programme for the bursars was held in Dubai this year where the Bursar of Oxford University was our facilitator. Our style is to train top executives using quality facilitators around the globe to impact, mentor and follow them up. To mark our 5th anniversary,we decided to sign an agreement with some notable institutions around the globe.”