Professor Abdulrasheed Abiodun Adeoye of the Department of Performing Arts, University of Ilorin speaks on the lingering disagreement between government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS), among other issues.
ASUU has countered the federal government’s directive asking its members to enroll into the IPPIS. What informed the standoff?
You have a formula that you want to use to pay my salary and that formula did not accommodate certain basic things that ordinarily I should enjoy and I have sent a proposal that your formula did not accommodate my sabbatical leave, adjunct services that I render to nearby universities, which are legitimate within the law, why should you be afraid to accommodate them? Who is actually fomenting trouble this time around? Is it ASUU or federal government? It is a question of ego, nothing more.
Government should just settle down and face some reality. Why are some agencies not on IPPIS? It is not a question of pride. Serious lecturers in any universities don’t just compromise things; we scrutinize and evaluate. You can accuse us of being too hypercritical.
The point is we don’t just take things the way they come. Is IPPIS in anyway going to affect the university autonomy, the answer is yes. I think people in the presidency, especially the Accountant General of the Federation, need to sit down and face the reality. If ASUU did not provide alternative or moderate what they brought, it is something else. We provided another opportunity that will not stop government from correcting the corruption. I pray it wouldn’t snowball into industrial action.
Would you suggest that the union’s plan be rescinded if government failed to see reason in what it has submitted?
Never in life should you ever be with the minority. Go round all federal universities, what is the percentage of the people that have subscribed among us into IPPIS; 10 percent! So, the implication is if you have 1,000 people and 900 are saying no, you know the answer. Let no point be in your life that you see yourself as an unfortunate minority. I will always stay where the majority will be.
There are lamentations over drop in the quality of education in the country. How would you rate the standard of education in Nigeria?
Some people will say it is falling, I don’t subscribe to that. In fact, the students we have now should be praised and appreciated. What did you have in the 70s and 80s when everything was almost free? What plans did you have for those students? Thank God in the same university, you need to just take your clothes, put them in front of your room, and people will just come and pack them and wash them for you. You have free meals and what have you. What plans did you have for these 21st century students? I think we need to be careful; otherwise their spirits would haunt us.
Those who think the standard is falling need to do self-reexamination. As a lecturer, I don’t miss my class and do critical research and produce things as an individual. So, would I claim standard is falling from my own end, No. We are in the fourth industrial revolution, where we talk about artificial intelligence; where those students alone do not need to rely on your analogue note. I needed to be current with that industrial age. We can shout till tomorrow, they will use the handset. The internet is their second home. And a serious lecturer should get himself acquainted with the reality of the multimedia age, which has come to stay with us.
I don’t subscribe to this simple generalization, what I can even call arrogance of intellectual pronouncement. The standard in University of Ilorin is not falling. I can speak about my school.
Let me now go into my narrow prejudice. The problem is failure of planning. Your religion, at times, may not allow you to limit the number of children you may claim you want to have. Do we plan? Can we claim that next year, this number of students would enter Nigerian universities? What do we do for them? Somebody that is supposed to be taking between two and four courses is taking between 11 and 12.
Government should continue to do more, carry everybody along, do proper planning. If I have my way, they should declare education sector as a crisis sector. We can use one year to formulate policies that would help us. Life itself is about policy thrust, and it is that policy thrust that we don’t like.
Kano State is meeting 25 percent budget allocation for education and there are sizeable numbers of students the state sends abroad to go and read medicine and law every year, and that state is growing steadily. Even when you want to accuse the state of overpopulation and what have you, that is a conscious effort and planning.
The federal government should stop establishing universities. It is becoming nauseating. It shouldn’t be ‘aso ebi’ kind of thing; otherwise we would be talking about glorified secondary schools. The universities that we have are enough; all we need to do is to make them mega universities. For instance in the six geopolitical zones, we select two universities each, making 12 and turn them to mega universities, where we can have close to an average of eight satellite campuses. Each faculty will be domiciled in a major town. That is the concept we have in the Osun State University. Each faculty separately, and in the next 20 years, they become universities of their own.
Recently, NUC said it has discovered 100 fake professors. Do we really have fake professors and is it true that many lecturers cut corners to get promotion?
If somebody is discovered to have violated the law, prosecute the person. I can’t say NUC has lied so if they are coming with that, to me, it is a good one. That means people, who may want to be in that line, will be conscious now. What I would not like is when you make that announcement and you let it die. Let me tell you, may be without NUC today, we wouldn’t be talking about universities. That body should be respected. I have been on NUC accreditation to several universities and without accreditation, for instance, where would universities be today?
I’m a privileged member of the Appointments and Promotions Committee and the rules are there to move from one rank to the other; you can’t cut corners. Self-publishing journals are in the past; not peculiar to this university anyway. If you want to move, even to senior lecturer, you will get international publications. People can clone the net; I am not ruling that out, but for us in the University of Ilorin, it is merit and hard work.
You talked about proliferation of universities in the country. What is your take on the issue?
Five or six private universities can come together to become one. Let us not delude ourselves. They can come together and become one, and you will see they would be strengthened rather than as individual status symbols. If you will have a private university, it should be university of law or medicine or education. Now, we have universities that run almost all the programmes.
As Professor of the Performing Arts, how far would you say drama has gone correcting societal ills?
Wole Soyinka was commissioned in 1959 to put up a play for the mere celebration of Nigeria’s independence, and he allowed the patriotic zeal in him to take over, and he ended up putting a play ‘A Dance of the Forests’. In the play, he predicted the doom and the downfall of Nigeria. Did it not happen six years after through the first and second coups? The dramatist is a forecaster, who preaches into the future.
May be you want to watch plays or films that celebrate roles of some personalities. After watching, don’t you think you feel something? That thing you are feeling is telling you that thing you are doing is not good, stop it; that thing you are feeling is saying that thing you are doing you needed to intensify and act on it more.
If the three generations of where you come from are poor, the tendency is you are going to die poor except you change it. It is not about prophesy or curse or anything.
Join Daily Trust WhatsApp Community For Quick Access To News and Happenings Around You.
