We attract foreign students despite Nigeria’s insecurity problem — AUN President

Margee Ensign is the President of the American University of Nigeria (AUN), Yola, Adamawa State. In this interview, she spoke on how more Chibok girls participated in the recent matriculation of the varsity and how the institution attracts foreign students amidst the security challenge in Nigeria and more. 

You have more Chibok girls that participated in the matriculation this year. Are you still expecting others?

The majority are not enrolled. There are still some that are completing their JAMB test and other things. I would say they are working extremely hard to make the transition as every entering student does from being in secondary school to tertiary institutions.

So, they are working very hard and all new students here have to work very hard because this is rigorous education here. Like for all students, we have a lot of support for them. We have a writing centre, a research centre and we have an advising centre that works with them and a health centre.

So, all the support is here to make sure that they are successful as well as all of our students. They amaze me with their determination and hard work and our open goal with every one of them as it is with all of our students is that they are successful here and that they are happy and that they get an education that prepares them to be leaders in their country.

Are reports of violence in the northern states impacting your enrollment figures?

I think we are doing really well. We just entered our second-largest enrollment figures since inception. I think the word is getting out that Yola is safe and peaceful and secured. It is actually a great place to get your undergraduate and graduate education because it’s a learning community.

Considering the state of the Nigerian security system, what do you do to attract new students from Rwanda, Niger and Cameroon?

Through our history, we had students from around the continent and from other continents and I’m thrilled that they are coming back now and I attribute that truly to our wonderful executive director of marketing and communications because more people are learning about AUN that we are different and they are meeting our alma maters.

So, what happened in Rwanda is that our prospective students met with some of our alma maters and that’s a really important story because they are proof of our education.

So, there are two reasons they are coming back. One, is that our marketing team is doing an outstanding job telling our unique story and our alma maters are everywhere; they are in Canada, USA, Rwanda, South Africa. They are doing really important work and they are sharing our story and they are proof of our education.

In your first tenure as the president of the university, you introduced the law programme, how is it going now?

The law programme is in great demand as you saw on campus. We are building that big law school building because the demand is so great. We have state of the art facilities now. They will even be more up to date when we move into the new building.

The law programme is very innovative for the courses that are taught there. There are some unique courses like gender law and development, new technologies in law, HIV and medical law, conflict and alternative dispute mediation.

So, we are really offering core courses; a very different approach to law. As you know, every student at AUN has to do what we call a CDV at a community development course, each unit has to design one and the law school CDV course is really unique.

Some of our students are working with prisoners to help to educate them to understand why they are in prison. They even paid the fines for some, so they’ve been released and then in our critical legal education programme, they also offer legal advice to students in the Yola community.

So, that’s how they are living the AUN development mission. I can’t imagine anything more important than working with indigent prisoners and making sure that they are getting the legal advice and sometimes the financial support they wouldn’t otherwise have.

You also introduced a whistleblower App in collaboration with Shehu Musa Yaradua Centre late last year. Can you tell us what you intend to achieve with that?

Not only did we launch the App which I believe is the first of its kind in a Nigerian university, but we rewrote and updated our safeguarding sexual harassment policy. The App is important because often it’s difficult for people who have been harassed or abused to report.

So, the fact that this is anonymous reporting makes it easier. We have got a whole team monitoring it all the time. We have a very strong structure that receives such reports, that meets with the person complaining as well as the person who is being accused of something.

So, it’s not just the app, but the App is a really important development to help all of us and I hope other universities adopt it.

It is already helping us because students/people are reporting and it’s made the reporting easier and that has opened a big roadblock in places that people don’t know who to go to and they are afraid to report.

Now, nobody is afraid anymore and they know how supportive my administration is. So, some people who have been affected are coming forward and we are dealing with it.

Are there plans to introduce new academic programmes at AUN?

We are going to apply for public health which is a critical, important programme in great need in the middle of this pandemic. We are looking at other innovative data and computer science programmes. So we are launching several new ones approved after application this year.

Over time, we would do medicine, but we wanted to do public health first, because the need for public health in the country and the continents in the world is so pressing and its needed right now and at the forefront of dealing with this pandemic and health challenges in the North East.

Are you considering online learning in the near future?

We are very much hoping to introduce some hybrid which is a combination of online and postgraduate programme in the next month.

You just concluded the matriculation ceremony. How significant is that to the school?

Sure, it’s a really significant and symbolic moment at AUN when every entering class comes in and the matriculation ceremony is important for three reasons; first, we talk about our mission as a development university, secondly, we talk about what it means to have an American style of education in Nigeria and that’s what we expect our students to learn the critical thinking, the problem solving and what they should expect from their education (small classes), close interaction and work with faculty.

And the third thing is the way we pledge to each other. We say we are going to uphold these ideas; we are going to strive for honestly in ourselves and everything we do.

I had many wonderful memories. One was of parents who were wondering if Yola was the place to leave their children and hearing them say “oh my goodness, it’s peaceful, calm and beautiful”. So, seeing parents begin to understand that this is really a learning environment is really an important moment for me.

Is there any other thing you would like to say that I haven’t asked?

I wanted to tell you a couple other things. When you talk about conflict reporting, we have launched a brand new centre for conflict analysis, early warning and peace-building and these are all areas where we have deep expertise.

So, we would be publishing regular reporting in a newsletter, analysing conflict locally, nationally, regionally and continent-wide. We are also working on an early warning system, not only for conflict but for food insecurity and environmental issues.

By Chidimma C. Okeke & Seun Adeuyi