By Enyeribe Ejiogu ([email protected])

With academic excellence, dedication and commitment to purpose, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, NAU, is doggedly pursuing its vision to be among the top 200 universities in the world. In a clear demonstration of come-from-the-back success, it has become the Third Most Sought After University among all federal, state and private universities in Nigeria. More importantly, its global ranking from 4497 three years ago to 2988 in June 2022.

Through his simple style of leadership over the past three years, the Vice Chancellor, Prof Okechukwu Esimone who was ranked 18th on the list of 28 Most Published Scholars in Nigeria in global high impact factor journals is inspiring academic staff to consistently pursue scholarship and intellectual excellence. Under his leadership, NAU is raking in academic grants from national and international sources as well as establishing very beneficial collaborations with notable Nigerian corporates and other organisations. ,In this interview, he sheds more light on the quantum leap NAU has recorded in the past three years and gives indication of anticipated achievements in the remaining two years of his tenure, to build on the solid foundation laid for attainment of the institution’s vision.

 

Nnamdi Azikiwe University has maintained a close relationship with the Confucius Institute. Why was China chosen for this collaboration instead of other similar socio-cultural institutes in Germany, Japan, South Korea, among other countries?

First, I want to say that we did not choose China. Rather, they chose us. The Confucius Institutes are outlets for exchange of knowledge on Chinese culture. A lot of people wrongly think that the institute is just about the learning of Mandarin, the Chinese language. If you understand the culture of a people, you will relate far and better with them. In essence, it is an institute that tries to teach Chinese culture and the language.

Usually, the Chinese headquarters of the Confucius Institute invites applications from tertiary institutions and the organisations select educational institutions based on certain criteria. In 2008, Nnamdi Azikiwe University was chosen to host a branch of the Confucius Institute. There are only two branches in the whole of Nigeria – Unizik and University of Lagos. Fortunately that of Nnamdi Azikiwe University has become a trailblazer not only in Nigerian, but Africa and the world. We have won several national and international awards, including the African Champions Award and the world. In the last competition, students from the Confucius Institute, Unizik, were able to beat native Chinese in spoken and written mandarin because we have the best of teachers. We have been able to understudy and deploy the judging criteria, so we impart that to our students, and that is how we have been able to emerge as one of the top Confucius institutes in the world. From our sterling performance, the Chinese have said the choice of NAU to host the Confucius Institute was not a wrong one.

To what can you attribute the success of the institute?

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I can say that it has everything to do with the Igbo trait of exhibiting excellence at all times. That is what is at the very core. The Igbo spirit is the spirit of excellence; spirit of survival of the fittest. That’s what we put into it. Actually, we deployed the survival instinct, business entrepreneurial skill and inert trait of excellence in the Igbo man to run the Confucius Institute. And it has paid off. In the course of the relationship, we have also exported our own culture to them, because it cannot be a one-way traffic. As they teach us Chinese, we teach them Igbo. We now have Chinese nationals who are coming to Unizik to study Igbo. Today, we have Igbo cultural exchange programmes, Igbo philosophy and theatre which we are exploring. Not too long ago, a product of the Confucius Institute, Emmanuel Ikechukwu Umeonyirioha, went to China to study and from there he was engaged as the first lecturer in the newly established Department of Igbo Language at Oxford University, Britain.

When you were appointed three years ago, what goals did you set out to achieve and how far have you gone towards achieving them?

I set out with a mantra that is known within the entire Nnamdi Azikiwe University (Unizik) system. It is called Project 200, which has the vision-mission of doing things that would enable us rise to be among the first 200 universities in the world, the first 10 universities in Africa and number in Nigeria. That goal was predicated on five pillars jointly known by the acronym, ACADA, to enable people remember them. The ‘A’ stands for academic excellence, so as to be nationally and globally relevant; C- for community service which is what universities are supposed to do; the second ‘A’ stands for administrative reforms; D- stands for discipline – the reason things are not done properly in Nigeria is because there is no discipline. We strongly believe that discipline should be embedded in our DNA code, to become one of the top 200 universities in the world; the last ‘A’ stands for advancements in every facet of the university system – in terms of infrastructure, security, quality, welfare, academic programmes and in every other area of work done by my predecessors, and to generally build on the achievements made by them and take them further.

Looking at the pillars individually, we have accomplished a lot. We noticed that the universities that are highly rated are known for academic excellence. The way to rate academic excellence in a university is to first look at publications. The ranking of a university depends on where their academic staff are publishing or the kind of scholarship they are  known for  as well as the kind of research grants they attract. So if you look at just those two – research grants and publications (there are several other parameters), we realised that in order to get our people published in high impact factor journals, there are two things you need to do. First, you have to educate them on how to do good research and secondly, you need to incentivise it. In South Africa for instance, incentives are attached to being published in a high impact factor journal. If you publish in such journals the university bears the cost of getting published. That is what is done in the United States and in Europe where I did my postdoctoral work. If you publish in high impact factor journals, where the cost is between US$1000-2000, you don’t bother about how you will pay for it – university pays because it is happy that you are promoting the institution and contributing to its ranking. But in Nigeria, it is the researcher that bears the financial burden of publishing his research findings. To change the paradigm, we incentivised it and took away the burden and assured them that if they publish in high impact factor journals the university would pay. This change spurred them and they started striving to get published, especially those who previously had phobia, probably because of cost. We did a lot of training and capacity building. We brought experts to teach them on how to do research works that can be published in high impact factor journals. The outcome was that we started seeing a surge of research works. We also subtly included this as part of the assessment guidelines for promotions. Our people in all faculties know the guidelines. So the awareness rocketed up and a lot of the academic staffs are now publishing. And this has enhanced the ranking of the university and the same thing with grants. Universities are known all over the world over by the quality and scope of grants senior lecturers, authors and researchers attract from organisations, corporate bodies and notable foundations. People are working to attract grants. Where I trained abroad, the ability of the institution to retain you in a particular department or as a professor depends on how many high value research grants you have attracted, but in Nigeria it is not like that. So, we established a unit in charge of research grants, to teach people how to write proposals for research grants.

The outcome has been phenomenal. That same year we started it, for the first time we got seven national research grants from Tertiary Education Tax Fund (TETFUND), ranging from N20-40 million. Before we could not even scratch one. Since then, our people have been winning grants. One of our staff is currently in Harvard University working on a research project based on a grant he got. There are those in other Ivy League universities in the United States. We have a team coordinating a grant from the World Health Organisation; that had never happened before in this institution.

These heart-warming developments have placed us among the global ranking. Our ranking has been enhanced. When I came onboard in 2019, we were at 4497 in world ranking. But by the last time I checked, we had moved up. In January 2021 we ranked 4773 in the world, 110 in Africa and 33 in Nigeria. One yera later in January 2022, our ranking improved, rising to 3464 in the world and 18 in Nigeria. By June 2022, the ranking of Unizik made further improvemt, rising to 2988 in the world, 53 in Africa and 12 in Nigeria, from where it was six months earlier. That tells you that the efforts we are making to actualise the vision is yielding very positive results.

Recently, I attended a policy meeting of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, and saw that we have become the third most sought after university, that is based on JAMB statistics of the number of students applying for admission into Nnamdi Azikiwe University. Before we were number 10 in Nigeria. Despite the insecurity in the state, which is a big minus, you still see that people want to associate or affiliate with us, both from within the nation and internationally. For instance, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, wants to affiliate with us.

In terms of community service, we have started a radio programme where departments and special units tell people in Anambra State about Unizik innovations and services that can offered to the public, to solve various problems in the society – that is another form of town-and-gown initiative.