How I built first class Faculty of Law -Prof Jadesola Akande, ex-LASU VC
By BISI OLALEYE
Tuesday, November 1, 2005

For Prof. (Mrs) Jadesola Akande, former Vice Chancellor of Lagos State University (LASU), discipline and uprightness are the driving force of any nation that would make progress.
Though many of her students and even colleagues have misconstrued this attitude of hers as ‘overbearing and harsh’. Jadesola will tell anyone who cares to listen that because discipline has failed that is why the educational system is on the brink of collapse.

In a chat with Daily Sun, she talked on her tenure as VC in LASU, her NGO, how she curbed cultism, life without her husband, among other things.

BACKGROUND
I am a professor of Law and currently the Executive Director of the Women Law and Development Centre, a small NGO which is exploring the empowerment and state of women. Well, I think we have done quite a lot. We have been to almost all the states of the federation. We have led a cross-section of the women, starting from the elite, the rich to the grassroots, the average women to the market leaders both men and women. We collaborate with other NGOs. What we do is to let women have their right and at the same time, appreciate their duties. First, right, then duties. We make them feel that they need to have more confidence in themselves to be able to get back to public life. To make impact in the public life.
State of education in the country

The general level of education has been on the decline in the past 10 years. We have graduates who can not speak correct English and universities cannot be faulted for this because they come in from bad primary schools. Where teachers are poorly paid and sell things to complement or supplement their salaries, which are not paid on time and children are left to their own device. They go from there to secondary schools that are poorly maintained. Where they learn nothing except how to become thugs and bullies. From there, they graduate to the universities to the same bad system. And therefore the universities cannot help that and they graduate with nothing to write home about.

I have heard professors who are still in the system, tell us that the standard of education has not fallen. Their premise being that, the children have lot more to learn, so that they have a deeper knowledge.
That is not true! You can learn many things and know them peripherally. So, if we don’t have a depth in any sort of knowledge, we have not learnt a thing. I think, we should go back to the basics. We should try by restructuring the programme in the primary school system. The situation whereby half of the children are out of school most of the time, is not going to do anybody any good. The sooner we face the situation, the better for us. I believe, however, that the new Universal Basic Education(UBE) is trying to address that issue.

And I wish them to address it from different perspectives other than just going to school and acquiring certificates. When our children go to school where there are no toilets, what message are we passing across to them? That it is all right to go behind the building and defecate. Many of the primary schools do not have toilets. I don’t think that UBE is directly addressing that issue, they are only addressing the issue of health of the child by giving them one free meal a day. So, after the free meal, where do they go to defecate? So, we should start from where necessary. Building fantastic classrooms is not the solution but they have to create enabling environment that will make children want to go to school.

I have heard stories whereby students, especially girls, have to leave school because there is no privacy. The toilets are jointly used by both the boys and girls and that boys actually watch out to see if blood is trickling down their bodies. Therefore, they decide to sit down during their monthly cycle.
Secondly, schools don’t have good water for hygiene, no water to flush the toilets. You see human waste litter the floors of the toilets. Create very good toilets and make boreholes that they will use to flush these toilets and importantly enough toilets for the girls and boys.

Subjects
I also believe that they learn more subjects that are not necessary. Let us see how they can jettison some of these subjects that they do not really need. There are so many number of them. They have packed these children’s brains with all sorts of dimensions. As far as I am concerned, Mathematics, English Language and possibly one of the sciences. Agric Science or even Physics. This is a combination of the subjects. And when it comes to the stage of specialisation, they can now choose and be grounded in that subject and they will make better wherever they go.
Also, a teacher’s welfare is important. It is more than important because the teacher is not only bringing up that child but building a whole generation of children.

Universities are producing half-baked lawyers
Not only half-baked lawyers. We have half- baked graduates. And when they go into law schools, they use just one year there. What can they achieve under one year? Some have spent six, seven years in the university and graduated with bad culture, bad diction, bad grammar. We must go back to basics. If you don’t speak well before you enter the university, you can’t learn it again. You see them in court and listen to their grammar that will even make you cringe on your seat. The Law School itself must realise that they are not there to assess their academic abilities alone. They must also assess them from the ethics of the profession. Let the Law School inform their students that if they want to practise (which is not compulsory), they must learn the ethics of the profession.

LASU Law Faculty was the best
You see, I didn’t have the least fortune of having a ready made Law Faculty. So, I had to build one. And I am one of those conservative people that believe that ethics, the rules and regulations must be followed. So, I started by telling them that if they want to pass from this faculty, they must behave and they know it!

First of all, they must dress properly. Secondly, they must speak properly, when they are speaking to their teachers. When I got there, some of them, were addressing their teachers by their first names because apparently, they thought that they are older than them (teachers). I now set up a system of monitoring. I created ‘houses’ and I put these houses under role models in the profession, where they can have a one-on-one chat at regular intervals. I made sure that they practise how to address the court and I made sure that it was constant. And when they started their debate, I made sure, that their teachers were there to correct what they were doing.

And then, the tutorial system, which is broken down. You know in tutorial, you have fewer students. I made sure that I will tell my staff, anybody who doesn’t attend the tutorial should not be allowed to sit for any examination.
You must have a minimum attendance because it is where they will explain what they didn’t get in the lectures. And if you miss that, what are you going to put down? So, over the years, they have known that no bad behaviour will be tolerated. In fact that time, their moral was high because they know that I will not sign their form to Law school.

Tenure and male professors
We are all colleagues. And they know that you cannot become a professor unless you pass through the gate. Of course, the normal male chauvinistic attitude is in Africans. Some of them will want to show that they are men. Then I looked at them straight in the face and go ahead with my work.
No! I was not intimidated by anyone of them. And I have a great fortune that, I was only a dean for a short while before being made the VC. Really, they have not got used to me to what I can do or not do before I became a VC.

Some of them may even think that they can toy with you but I tell them quite politely that I may be a female but I am neither their wife nor mother nor their sister. That I am there to do a job and that they either co-operate, see that the job succeeds otherwise, they will be out of the system. I got a lot of co-operation by and large. And of course, I had a deputy who is a man! And what I found out most of the times is that most of them will not show up in meetings and when they do, all they want to do is criticise without offering constructive alternatives. For these men, I get quite brusque with them and they know it. But others are quite OK, they offer suggestions. If it is workable, we work it out and if not, we leave it. Also, I made it a point not to listen to gossips and my staff know it. I will not give you time to do it.

Nostalgia about LASU
Not at all. That is 13 years ago! ( Laughter) You see, my attitude to life is that I do my work to the best of my ability. I have to give it my very best and once I leave there, I don’t have any regret. So I don’t have nostalgia. I got there for a purpose and to achieve what I went to achieve and that is it.

Council Chairman of FUTA
( Laughter) I think, I will let the council enumerate my achievements. I know that in my usual way, I did my best when I was there. I got there and found out that the university that has great potentialities was gradually being destroyed by factions. They had factionalised themselves, like that of the students, lecturers and indigenes. I made sure that these factions disappeared since we need to work towards the same goal of building the university. Then we looked at the areas where people were angry, frustrated and so on. Then we now looked at the structure. It is the same I did in LASU. If students don’t like their atmosphere, they will misbehave. So, we decided to change the atmosphere.

Can you explain the controversy that was generated during the selection of the current VC, Prof. Adeniyi Peter and how it was resolved?
Factions! Some factions won’t let him be VC on the campus. And I said no way. I got police to escort him to the campus. And they knew that they cannot dare me and they didn’t want to anyway because of my reputation of being very harsh (Laughter). Both students and lecturers were put in their appropriate places.

Most people feel that you are extremely harsh. How do you feel?
I didn’t feel anything. You see, when I was lecturing in the University of Lagos, I was also thought to be wicked until much later. When you are firm as a mother, people don’t understand. So, as far as I am concerned, my students are my children and I will deal with them the way I deal with my four biological children by setting and applying the same standard. And they all know that I won’t accept any nonsense, no matter how beautiful, from anybody.

Should university education be free and hostel accommodation be at N90?
No! I think, I offended LASU because I was one of the people that brought up that idea. Look at what is happening even in government hospitals. When they give people drugs, they don’t appreciate to keep it for next use. They feel they are all right and can trash the remaining. But I tell you, if they pay for these drugs, they will value it and know how best to preserve them in case of recurrence. In every nation, their responsibility is to provide basic education to read and write that will take them to secondary school. After that you are working for yourselves.

Finally, how is life without your husband?
Well, it was tough to begin with. But gradually one appreciates that there are things that have been left undone. And there was no one left except me. We still have children in the university. My husband had a business which I developed to a certain level. And he just got a new office and hired lawyers who were working for him before his death. And if I don’t ‘shine my eyes well well’ (laughter), nothing will happen.

When you look at these things, it helped me recover fast.
Though I am yet to fully recover entirely, because many at times, you feel like closing the door of the whole world and putting the light out. But when I remember that if I do that, other things will be affected, I get going. It has not been easy and I try to live for the sake of my children.