‘The very first challenge is over-regulation’

Private universities are fittingly filling the gap created by limited placements in government owned universities. In this interview Dapo Folorunsho Asaju, vice chancellor, Ajayi Crowther University (ACU), Oyo, tells Bunmi Banjo and Hezron Atunde about some of the challenges private universities face. Excerpts:

Eighteen months as Vice-Chancellor at ACU, tells us about some of the challenges running a private university in a recession?

Thank you, all private universities came on board to contribute their quota to national development. You will know that candidates who apply for admission every year here in Nigeria are in millions. The federal and state universities can only take a fraction of these numbers. This is because they are also regulated by regulatory bodies such as the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) that gives the quota of how many people you must admit. So the very first challenge is over-regulation by the regulatory bodies.

We would have been able to take more students but we have been given restrictive quota we cannot exceed. There are thousands of candidates every year who have nowhere to go, we ought ordinarily to be able to assist in this direction, but that regulatory restriction is preventing us and cannot maximise the admission of candidates.

The second is the usual problem of finance. The privately owned universities do not have access to the Tertiary Education Trust Funds (TETFUNDS) which is money collected as tax but private universities are not allowed to enjoy it.  This is unjust. Many universities use the money from the TETFUNDS to construct their buildings and to run  training programmes or opportunity for people to be able to travel outside this country sponsoring some people for (Doctor of Philosophy) Ph.D and putting up structures and buildings here and there we don’t have that access  so we have to generate our own money to build structures, accredit our programmes, pay salaries and keep the system running. Electricity bills, diesel, medicals involve huge costs and a lot of money needed to run the university.

So you are not able to meet the quota that has been given?

We have not been able to meet because many parents say they cannot pay the fee and even those who are here, some still owe fees. The fees they owe us are about a hundred million naira.

Still on recession is ACU making any effort to help parents and sponsors deal with tuition fees?

Well what we have done in this university is to maintain the regime of fees which we put in place in 2011, I am not aware of any other university that has kept the fees stable from 2011 to now and the second thing that we did was to allow parents to pay in three installments with three installments, payment comes to as low as N150,000, so that students can come in. That is what we can do otherwise we will not be able to meet our other financial obligations.

At your first convocation in ACU, you said steps will be taken to allow private universities access TETFUND. Any progress?

Well, I have to go back to the history.  Many years ago, when the universities called upon government to properly fund universities and polytechnics, they said they could not afford to do more than what they were doing  which was a fraction of their  budget, so the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) told the government they will teach them how to make the money. The argument went thus: the best products that come from the universities are hired by the private sector so they are really benefitting from our product therefore they should contribute to funding the process.

We asked that 2% of their profit every year be put into the TETFUND to develop the universities and government bought into it, and when it was enacted they found out that there were billions of naira in it and did not even know what to do with it. These are funds that came based on our own suggestions as at the time we were making that suggestion I was the ASUU chairman of Lagos State University and so we were the people that fought for this and unfortunately now after fighting for such a thing we cannot even access it in a university where the private sector provides money but the universities owned by the private people do not even have access.

On infrastructure we are aware that the school has another site, any developments there yet?

Well it is still a virgin land; it is 117 hectares of land which is just about five minutes’ drive from this main campus, which is where we want to start the faculties of engineering, agriculture and college of medicine

As an education administrator, in assessing the Buhari led administration what will you say the administration has done right or wrong in terms of the education sector?

My opinion is that Buhari didn’t really come to promise us anything in the education sector and when you don’t promise we do not hold you responsible, I think what he has done is to fight Boko Haram and to pursue people who stole money.

In your 18 months as the VC of ACU, what is your assessment of the current image of the school?

I think that ACU is a university that is not very well known. We have an Anglican Heritage, and the Anglican Church introduced education into this country, hospitals, professions, fought for independence, most of the virtues of modern civilisation were brought by this church, so it is a university that is standard and duly licensed with most of the programmes accredited.

It is a university that has a good crop of lecturers, doctors and professors who are very sound and of international recognition and are doing their best. It is a place to get very sound education and education is not just a function of academic excellence alone, but also moral rectitude and we are emphasising so much on that, we have introduced a character course that has been approved by senate. Students who do not pass the character course will not graduate even if the student finished with a first class. We fear God and worship God, we worship twice every week, this are the attractions, if parents want a disciplined place where they can be sure that their children are safe and are receiving good education and they will come out with good behavior, Ajayi Crowther University Oyo is the place to be.

What will you say has being your personal motivation as an educational administrator over the years?     

The only thing that has motivated me is that I regard my service as unto God and unto humanity, I have put in 34 years teaching in the university as a lecturer and as a professor, and eventually I became the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Lagos State University and now I am the vice chancellor here.