By Dr. Christopher Eichie.
The University and its related institutions are often classified as the citadel of learning. A citadel is clearly defined as a fortress that commands a city and is used in the control of the Inhabitants and in defence, particularly during attack or siege.
Conventionally, for a University to effectively function as a citadel, it is granted reasonable autonomy from the state. This enables it function without limitations from the bureaucratic bottlenecks that characterise state command and control. While the state ensure that the citadel is effectively funded, its administration is placed in the hands of professional academics of standing and repute. The Vice Chancellor of a University is a professor and cannot be less. The state relies on the academic discipline of the administration and staff of a University in sustaining its calibre as society’s bastion. Further to its central role in the building and sustenance of statehood, society has ensured that the University is not faltered by political influence, subjective decisions and activities.
Developmentally, the University is the cocoon or incubation room where core values and holistic knowledge are impacted in the mental psyche of the students who graduate to hold leading positions in the social order. It is also an assured centre that provides better insight into development issues either as they deliver on crises control or the Generation of new ideas and dimensions of development.
To that effect, the role and place of the University is sacrosanct and preserved in any development focused society. It is in this dimension that the state ensures that the capacity of the University to think unbiasedly for the good of the society is preserved and guaranteed. The University, apart from being a place for learning, is necessarily the primary Institution for development in any social system.
It is with this insight that the present state of Ambrose Alli University with regards to Government intervention begin to elicit serious concerns. No doubt, the original vision for Ambrose Alli University was to expand the opportunities available to the knowledge seeking minds in Edo State (the then Bendel State) as well as establish a foremost research centre of International recon that will act as a booster to the State Government. With the vision of making the University competitive with the best in the world, Ambrose Alli University was purposed to enrich the world with sophisticated delivery through its research and knowledge management endowment. However, the present policies of Government which compromised the operationality of the administrative and academic institutions of Ambrose Alli University, clearly, mortgaged this fundamental attribute of a University environment.
It is apparent that Ambrose Alli University was the personal vision of Professor Ambrose Alli geared towards elevating the development bar of his state and country, He was determined to making the University, then called Bendel State University competitive with the leading Universities in the world. Thus, investing his credibility and broad interaction in the academia, Professor Ambrose Alli ensured that among the first Staff of the Institution were foreign Professors drawn from leading Universities in the western world. Drawing from this history, the present state of Ambrose Alli University clearly contradicts the desired vision of the mind that established the Institution.
Majorly, the recent decisions of government which includes unilaterally imposing an acting Vice Chancellor on the University as well as the Legislation by the Edo State House of Assembly empowering the Governor to tamper with the internal control of the University reduces the Institution to the status of a glorified Secondary School.
While the immediate past Vice Chancellor of the University might have his errors, he, no doubt, holds record that is empirical in his outstanding contributions to the development of the University. His contributions to the developmental needs of the Institution immensely reinforced the primordial vision that guided the establishment of the University. It also encouraged the efforts of past student union activists and Leaders in ensuring that at list a relic of the pristine vision that underpinned the establishment of the University is sustained.
It can be said that four main bodies account for the present infrastructural development of Ambrose Alli University. Primary among this is Professor Ambrose Alli, the original mind that conceived the University, the second is student’s activists whose brilliant articulation, insistent protests and agitations compelled Government to offer staggered interventions, the Government of Chief Lucky Igbinedion, and Professor Onimawu who is the immediate past Vice Chancellor of the University.
This submission makes bold to states that beyond the effort and commitment of Professor Ambrose Alli in the initial investment of the University, the contributions of various Governments to the infrastructural development of the Institution have been pathetically skewed. However, we acknowledge the Government of Chief Lucky Igbinedion with regards to the infrastructural development of the University and a reasonable commitment by Government under his leadership to funding of the institution.
In recent years, Ambrose Alli University has suffered from irregular payment of salaries to Staff of the University and improper funding which has placed the burden of sustaining the University in a very high fees payment by students. Logically, where the political leadership of a social system fails in providing for the developmental and welfare needs of the people, its leadership resort to arm-twisting and other forms of intimidation to sustaining compliance, compromise and control. Thus, the recent passage of the law grating special intervention powers to the governor of Edo State on Ambrose Alli University is in sync with the dialectics of history. Sadly, it is a development that highly escalate the woes that has befallen Ambrose Alli University. As a policy, the passage of the law totally erodes the autonomy of the University and subsume it in the bureaucracy of the Civil Service
The unilateral dissolution of the governing Council of the University and the appointment of an Acting Vice Chancellor in disregard of the global best practices for University administration, is indicative of the journey ahead of Ambrose Alli University presently.
Ambrose Alli University will be counted among the few victims of state dictatorship to be placed at the mercy of a Special Intervention Team as extrapolated in a law recently passed by the Edo State House of Assembly. When the status and credibility of the Edo State House of Assembly is subjected to an investigative compass, the dilemma facing Ambrose Alli University presently is better understood.
The attempt to gag Ambrose Alli University is an attack on intellectual development in Edo State which informed the establishment of the Institution primordially. It is a negation of the development of Edo State. Ambrose Alli University, if effectively developed, ought to be functioning as a research resort which articulate programmes and perspective that will guide Government in policy formulation and deepen government’s perspective in policy implementation.
It is also of note that the funding of the University by the State Government falls short of all expectations. To be humble about it, facts reveal that the era of this Government has been the worst for the University in terms of funding. Drawing from the improper and inadequate funding of the University, Ambrose Alli University currently exists with a fees regime that absolutely reverses the initial vision of the university. Ambrose Alli University, which was established as a non-tuition paying University presently rank among the Universities with the highest tuition fees in Nigeria.
It will immensely benefit the state and its development if the primordial vision that informed the establishment of the university is revisited. This include making the University the most outstanding citadel of tertiary leaning in Nigeria. It also calls for creating the enabling environment that will attract academics of distinction in research and intellectual rigors to take employment with the Institution.
To engender the enabling environment for this, the University needs to achieve the building of strong Institutions and Department, adequate and sophisticated residential and academic infrastructures, strengthen its research facilities and broaden its reach in building collaborations. In other words, threading this part, demand the installation of the appropriate infrastructures that delivers optimum academic capacity for the Institution.
To continue to muzzle the institutions of the University into conformity and pacifism is an antithesis that is clearly incompatible with the primordial vision that informed the establishment of the University. It negates the institutional relevance of the University to the development of Edo State in particular and Nigeria holistically. It is an antithesis that must not be allowed to stand.
In conformity with the purpose of Government in expanding the development scale of society, it is only fundamental for Government to increase funding for the University. Furthermore, the present high fees paid by students of the University negates the primordial vision of the founding fathers of the Institution as it bears on broadening access to Tertiary Education for the people of Edo State. Thus, a review of the present fees regime of the University is fundamental to regenerating the pristine vision that underpinned the establishment of the University.
Finally, it needs be said that education is the most critical variable in driving development. Therefore, to compromise the standards of Ambrose Alli University and negate the status of the Institution in research delivery assaults the development potentials of Edo State.
Dr Christopher Eichie.