Unical pro-chancellor suggests ways to end rape in higher institutions

Senator Nkechi Nwaogu is from Osisioma Local Government Area of Abia State. She was appointed the pro-chancellor and chairman of the University of Calabar Governing Council, Cross River State in May 2017 by President Muhammadu Buhari. In this interview with our correspondent, she spoke on her appointment and other issues including how to limit rape in higher institutions

How has it been being the University of Calabar Pro-chancellor?

It is a new thing and a new sector of life endeavor. For me, I am excited because this is an area of academia that I have never been involved. I am happy to be there because the university is different environment with different expectations. It is a place that you are dealing with people that have knowledge of everything in the academic field.

Chairing the Governing Council of the institution is something that I am beginning to cherish because you have people from different regions of the country like when I was senate committee chairman for Banking and chairman senate committee for Oil and Gas Resources. So, I am enjoying it.

Did the appointment come to you as a surprise, because many expected that the President could have made you the liaison officer at the National Assembly?

I wasn’t expectant, rather it came as a surprise because I am somebody who has been in the banking industry all my life and in the last few years in the National Assembly, I was privileged to chair the oil and gas committee. These two areas were the places I was expecting to be appointed. But when this one came, it came as a big surprise and I went there, I found it very interesting.

In the university community, you meet people of different shades of thinking because of their level of academic exposure in different field of academic endeavor.

It has made me, as the chairman of the Board to sit up and ensure that I am able to chair the council with a view to providing good leadership in the management of the resources of the university which is one of the prime responsibilities of being chairman of a university council like University of Calabar.

What were the things on your templates that you want to achieve as the Pro-chancellor of University of Calabar?

When I got into the University of Calabar, I discovered that there was acute shortage of accommodation both for teaching and non-teaching staff including the students which made me to start thinking on how to reduce the stress of accommodation on staff and students.

I also discovered that a lot of our assets are moribund and not being properly utilized. That was how the idea of Public Private Partnership (PPP) came in.

We have some hospitality and other assets that are not profitably used. Most of them are just wasting and it is as a result of bureaucracy. But we are working towards it with the legal department of the university to see how we can turn these things around to be able to generate income for the university because the subventions that they receive from the federal ministry of education is far below the needs of our university and its is expected that we should be involved in various income generating activity in the university.

Our hotels and our publishing company including other assets should be able to generate income for the university. Truly, if they belong to an individual, they should be enough to generate income that will sustain a family and make profit.

I would like under my tenure for these assets to be turned around to begin to earn profit for the university. I would also like us to ensure that we have a vibrant website where students and lecturer’s achievements in terms of researches will be published so that people can learn and see that this university is tremendously improving in their quality of education.It is not as if the university is not doing serious researches, but because it has not been brought unto a platform where other people, institutions in Nigeria and the globe can see what the university is doing and to rate us, especially by the external community.

How have you been able to manage affairs in the school that there is relative peace in the institution, unlike what it used to be?

I would say that it has been a collaborative effort between the senior management of the university ably led by the vice chancellor Prof Zana Akpako and his senior team including my humble self.

What we did was to read riot acts to the students. In the past, people had bad impression on them with regards to student’s cultism among other things. But to the glory of God, that era has gone, even though there was an ugly incident where two students who are not on campus were killed as a result of cult related activity.

I thank God that there are few things that have completely died out. One is that no student has been blackmailed or result being withheld because he/she didn’t buy lecturer’s handout. Such things are no longer prevalent in the university. It has already being achieved before I came onboard.

The first thing I did when I came onboard was to have a town hall meeting with every staff of the institution because I said that I would apply a bottom to top approach in our board administration in finding out what the needs of the university are. We see the ones that we can do immediately and the ones that can be done much later.

The town hall meeting went well with the community staff. It has never been done in the university and in the meeting, I gave them the assurance that I will run and open door; that the council will like to work with them so that we will be able to bring policies that will bring about positive changes where it is required in the university and that has really brought good relationship between the staff.

How is your administration checking malpractices during exams and also making sure that students get their correct scores after writing exams?

Well, we have introduced a few policies like the open door policy of having access to the board. A disciplinary committee had already been instituted even before my appointment. There is a name and shame policy where the council will not tolerate extortion of students by any lecturer, no matter how highly placed the person is in the school or in the society. We stand to expose people of such debased minds. I call them debased because the lecturers are like parents to these students and how would the lecturer feel if another professor or lecturer treats his or her child the same way in another school?

I, as a parent will not tolerate it. I know I have some of such cases being handled by our disciplinary committee. They will come up with a recommendation and it will get to me in the council for final decision on such matters and anybody caught on exam malpractice between the student and the lecturer, both of them suffer the same fate.

We don’t condone plagiarism as a professor is expected to have an original work. The university has software that is used to assess the originality of their thesis and to qualify as a professor you are supposed to do some publications which should be original too.

We have the system in place to checkmate plagiarism and any form of malpractice.

Are there special scheme set aside by the school for some of the lecturers who would want to study further to enhance their knowledge on the course they are teaching?

There is a programme like that and it is available for teaching and non-teaching staff.

How is the university embracing new media in teaching and learning?

The University of Calabar, is among the few universities that have embraced e-learning and it is expected to reduce teacher-student physical contact. E-learning is already in place but it hasn’t covered all the faculties and departments; it is a gradual thing.

In some departments, you don’t need to go to class and there is an e-learning board where they go and download what has been taught and read at your own pace and time. But they must conform with the date of the exam because the date of the exam is not staggered.

What have been able to discover that needed to be improved in our education system since your appointment?

My perception then as a politician and now as the pro-chancellor of University of Calabar is completely different. Now, I am a participant in the world of academia and I have seen that there quite some things that needed to be improved upon is the process of exam result collection.

Situations where results are manually collect their results from year one to the final year should be jettisoned. I do hope that every university in Nigeria including mine; University of Calabar should be able to give students their results on the go. Why should a student come back to say that they have come to collate their results from various departments. Up till now, there no totally reliable means of collecting students’ fees without compromise.

What I mean by that is that system of school fees collection, even though it might be through ICT, it is still not that effective as to ensure that students who hasn’t pay their school fees will have no business sitting for exams and collecting their results. The system should be able to detect that a particular student hasn’t paid his or her school fees.

There are few other things in the university that needs to be tightened so that the university can improve physically because if you go to some universities, you will see that there is need for collaborative efforts.

The number of students attending universities and using university’s resources, including mine doesn’t correlate with the fees collected. So, there are so much leakages and I will be glad to see that universities including mine will introduce systems that should be able to capture students from the day an admission is offered to him or her till the day he or she leaves the school.

What would you like to be remembered for as the pro-chancellor of University of Calabar?

I would like to be remembered for introducing new things in the university. I came in and I met seven committees and I felt that there are quite some areas that were left unchecked and unutilized. As my prime function is to ensure that the university improves their lot through improved income generation, I saw areas that were ordinarily ought to be brought into income generating field. I had to bring them onboard.

We created more five committees headed by enthusiastic, committed, dedicated board members and they are unraveling things. Like I told you earlier, bureaucracy in federal universities makes it possible for universities to tolerate wastages which is not good. Wastages account for poor funding in the university.

Universities are poorly funded and since federal government cannot alone provide the needs of the universities, we have to look inwards to see how we will be able to run the affairs of the universities without lowering standard. That is what I want to be remembered for.

I also want to be remembered for ensuring that there is open access to all that are involved in the university. Be it in the lowest or higher carder. For now, I want to be remembered for ensuring that there is a smoother relationship among the staff and the senior management of the university.