Decay in varsities reflection of past neglect – LAUTECH VC
By GABRIEL DIKE
Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Established over 15 years ago, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomosho is among the third generation state university owned by the Oyo and Osun state governments. The institution is currently making waves while the authorities are determined to break new grounds as well as maintain excellent academic services.

In the 2005 rating of universities by the National Universities Commission (NUC), LAUTECH was rated the best state university and third best in the country, it got the best state vice chancellor award from NUC last year and research fair award, among other remarkable achievements made by the institution in its short period of existence.

The Vice Chancellor, Professor Babatunde Adeleke, who is serving two "masters" (Oyo and Osun governments), was appointed in October 2005. He told Daily Sun of his dream to make LAUTECH one of the best in the world, why the university remained the best state university for the past three years, future plans, and why no Nigerian university made the recent Africa and world ranking of universities.

Introduction
My name is Professor Babatunde Benjamin Adeleke, the Vice Chancellor of LAUTECH. I started my academic career as graduate assistant at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife, after I graduated from the Chemistry Department of the University of Ibadan. I attended Queens University in Canada for my M.Sc and Ph.D, returned to Nigeria in 1977 with an appointment at U.I and rose through the ranks.

On October 1, 1986, I became a Professor of Chemistry, I spent sometime in Kuwait as a visiting Professor and I have gone on sabbatical leave to a number of universities in the country, I also interacted with a number of institutions as external examiner. In 2002, I was appointed Rector of Osun State Polytechnic, Iree and was there for about three and half years before I was appointed the Vice Chancellor of LAUTECH in 2005.

Assumption of duty
When I resumed in October 2005, I took over a university that was on solid ground, best state university in Nigeria at the moment and it will remain so. Also, in the 2005 National Universities Commission (NUC) rating, LAUTECH was ranked third best among the over 76 federal, state and private universities. We want you to go round and see what we have on ground. In particular, visit our faculties, ongoing projects, computer centre within the senate building and the central laboratory.

Accreditation of courses
All our academic programmes are accredited by the NUC except the new ones. At the last NUC accreditation exercise, we had seven new courses fully accredited, including our MBBS, all courses in Faculty of Agriculture were accorded recognition.

So also are the ones in Faculty of Environmental Sciences, courses such as Food Science and Engineering are fully accredited. With this success story on accreditation of courses, the university is indeed the best state university in Nigeria, there is no doubt about it. We are striving hard to improve on what we have on ground.

Forthcoming convocation
As at now, the university is preparing for a convocation ceremony which will hold on April 27, 2005. For now, the faculties are waiting for the graduating students to complete their programmes and as soon as this is done, the convocation will come up as stated above. The installation of the university Chancellor, Justice Kayode Eso, will hold the same day, we are also going to have honorary degrees awarded to the chancellor and to prominent Nigerians including Chief Olabode George, Governor of Oyo State, Otunba Adebayo Alao-Akala and Minister of Agriculture, Alhaji Adamu Bello, Also, on that day, the university will have an endowment fund to raise N5 billion and eminent Nigerians have been invited to grace the occasion and contribute to the development of LAUTECH.

NUC ranking of varsities
LAUTECH is the current best state university in Nigeria but we see that as the beginning of the various steps, the university will climb to be on top. With the help of the governing council, management, staff and even students, this university will within the shortest possible time become the best in Nigeria in terms of technology, its products and commitment to Nigeria and the immediate community. And the process has started, we are working on our Information Communication Technology (ICT) programme and research breakthrough.

Some of the problems that Nigeria experiences are lack of equipment, poor teaching and research. We have started to address them. At Osogbo campus, you must have seen the various equipment that we purchased for research for the departments at the College of Health Science. One of the main areas which we are paying attention is research meant to raise the output of members of staff and to impact positively on our community.

Also, the university is developing its own sporting facilities for our students.
The university is enjoying a peaceful atmosphere, there is cooperation, commitment and dedication by members of staff and the students are also committed to working hard to ensure LAUTECH is at the top of the ladder, particularly the NUC ranking of universities. On our part, the authorities, governing council and the senate would provide good quality leadership to ensure the institution remains focus to sustain the numerous achievements recorded as well as break new grounds.

Absence of Nigerian varsities in Africa and world ranking
I want to cast your mind back to the late 70s and early 80s when every now and then, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) would come out to tell the Nigerian public that things were not well with the Nigerian universities and that facilities were not provided, equipment were not adequate and that many staffers were leaving the system and the shores of this nation.

Those of us who were in the system, knew what was happening and we stayed back but the Nigerian society was not prepared to listen to us.

The genesis was that ASUU was out fighting for more money but we knew that things were getting bad, real terribly bad. In my department at the University of Ibadan, at a point in time we decided we were not going to graduate students because we did not have facilities to graduate them. But the system would not allow us to do that. What I have tried to analyse is that the state of our universities today is a reflection of what happened in the 70s when funds were not adequately provided for the universities to buy equipment, chemicals and other things.

So, it is not surprising to people like me that Nigerian universities are where they are today. But I am happy that within the last two to three years, the nation has woken up to its responsibility and the attempt made to improve on the funding situation at both federal and state levels and we are hoping that if this is sustained in the next three years, it is possible to have a Nigerian university among top 100 or 200 in Africa and the world . But that presupposes that adequate funding will continue and the system will be stable as we have now. For us in LAUTECH, we have started the journey, we are hoping and praying that LAUTECH will be one of the first three that will make the ranking list in Africa or the World.

Accreditation of programmes
We presented 12 academic programmes, seven were fully accredited while five were given interim accreditation. The programmes not presented were accredited about three years ago. The accreditation of academic programme lasts for five years, so if a programme was accredited within the three years, then such a programme will not be presented for accreditation when NUC officials visit.
How Oyo and Osun state governments fund LAUTECH.

Yes, the funding situation of LAUTECH is that of 50-50 per cent partnership between Oyo and Osun state governments. For instance, salarywise, between January and June, Oyo State Government picks the bill while from July to December, Osun State Government pays the staff salary. And the capital grant which is monthly is fixed for both states but the release is a different matter.

Endowment fund of N5 billion
A university of technology such as ours is very expensive to run. When you go round, you will see the equipment we have in our laboratories and workshop. And for us to achieve our set goals, LAUTECH needs much funds, our Information Communication Technology (ICT) will gulp much money. We want to provide more facilities and equipment in all the faculties and again this will require much funds. We need new faculty buildings, offices for our members of staff.

This university is only about 15 years old, so it very young and it is still developing. You can not compare LAUTECH with University of Ibadan, for instance, where all the infrastucture more or less are in place and what they need to do is to maintain these facilities. This is still a growing university and because of that we still need much money for development and that is why we are planning for the endowment fund, so that we can put in place what we need for the university to accomplish aims and objectives.

Mass Communication and pre-degree programmes
When we have enough resources and the management thinks we need to mount Mass Communication, we shall certainly do so. On pre-degree programmes, of course, the various programmes are terminal and intensive ones which require much money to run.

I must say that our programmes are not as expensive as other programmes in UNILAG and LASU. Diploma programmes in UNILAG is above N150,000 per session, what we charge is N40,000 per year for the pre-degree that is if you are from Oyo or Osun states and N50,000 if you are from outside of the two states. So, we do not consider our programmes more expensive than others around us.

Research bank
We came back from Abuja after the 2005 Research Fair organised by the NUC, the management has decided on what to do with some of these research findings. Knowingfully that this is a university of technology, there are quite a number of innovative research outputs that we have which are just there, so what we are planning is to have what we will call a Research Bank, whereby all the findings will be sold and the prospective investor will be brought in to look at what is available.

Already, there is a group working on the possibility of getting some of these projects patented both in Nigeria and outside the country, it is a long process but we have already started doing that. That is also one of the reasons we want to bring back some of our students who worked on these projects, we want them to come back to the institution to put finishing touches to some of these projects. We are already looking at ways to link up with the prospective enterpreneurs to finance some of the projects. But I must warn, it takes quite a while.

What we are trying to prevent is the Japanese coming here and picking up that product before you know it, it is already in our market, so that is why we are keeping some of these behind the scene.

Serving two masters
I can’t say I am serving two masters (Oyo and Osun state governments, owners of LAUTECH). I am serving only one master and that is God. This university is owned by two state governments, and we have two governors. I must say both of them are very understanding, they are committed to the development of this institution, in fact, they are very proud of LAUTECH.

Each time I appear before any of them, they are very happy to receive me as the vice chancellor of LAUTECH because they are proud of the university. Anytime we have a request, they are willing to listen but, of course, we know that it is not every request taken to them that they honour immediately because of other competing demands. They are happy with us and we are happy also with them, we want to use this medium to say a big thank you to the executive governors of Oyo and Osun states for being there for LAUTECH all the time.

Carrying capacity as approved by NUC
The carrying capacity of LAUTECH as regards admission was determined by NUC and what we have done is to follow what the NUC asked us to do. Where we couldn’t follow it strictly, we go back to them. There is a limit, if they give you say 3,000 admission placement and if you exceed by one or two per cent, I don’t think they would mind, that is what we at LAUTECH have done.

Entrepreneurship programme
LAUTECH, from inception, has the policy that any student that graduates from here should be able to engage him/herself in one business or the other. That is why all our students spend six months on IT, we also have a programme whereby they spend sometime with the roadside mechanics, so that they get practical experience and we also expose them to some management courses.

The totality of it is that by the time they graduate, they have enough information and knowledge for them to start their own small-scale business but within the next one or two years, we are going to formalise the entrepreneurship programme in this university. At the moment, it has not been formalised.