Professor Francisca Oladipo is the Vice Chancellor of Thomas Adewumi University (TAU), Kwara. She spoke on the institution’s progress in the space of three years, its feats in securing full operational licence from the NUC and projections for the next few years, among others.
Your university is just three years into operation but is among the highly ranked, what is your story?
The university is an upcoming one and is now almost the leading varsity in Kwara State. It was licensed in April 2021 and started full operations in September. In terms of ranking, we are fourth in Kwara and number 11 of all the private universities in Nigeria and 39th in the over 300 in the whole of the country.
When I came in, the university had no strategic plan; a lot of things were happening but not coordinated, so I had to produce one. We started with 13 academic programmes and by next September, we are going to admit our first set of medical students. This, together with Law, was not in the plan before but came after 25 years of the university’s establishment.
I resumed in August and by October, we got NUC’s approval to start Law. Though it was daunting but I knew we must offer signature academic programmes if we want to stand out.
We are the only university in Nigeria offering Doctor of Physiotherapy and we have also gotten full operational licence from the NUC. Now, we are about to start our open distance learning.
So, we have moved to 27 strong academic programmes from the initial 13. For the current session, we have admitted close to 700 students and the number is still ongoing. These are our development and expansion phases.
Funding has remained the biggest challenge of education. As a private varsity, how do you generate funds to run the institution?
Our founder is the sole financier of the university. The founder was the one paying salaries before, it was when I came that I stopped it and we have been lucky to have people who want to work here despite its rural setting, which has helped us tremendously.
So, to ensure that the project does not become a burden to him, we devised a strategy to minimise costs to the barest minimum because we don’t enjoy funding from TETFund or anywhere except from him. We had 66 students when I came and school charges couldn’t do anything. The second set of students were 102 or thereabout.
We are located in a rural community with an abundance of about 300 hectares of land most of which was not developed and we decided to go into farming. We then empowered all our works departments, like engineering, and furniture, amongst others to do things ourselves 100 per cent by using the local materials around us in construction, building and fabrication.
So, each time we cut a tree for construction, we replant. We make our own hostel lockers, beds, road mapping and building construction, asphalting and bricks production. We grow all the food we eat on our farm and now boast of a cattle ranch. We rear our own fish for local consumption.
We are fully residential, so our students are not allowed to cook. That is why we embarked on a deliberate process to look for ways to significantly reduce the cost of food that they buy and the easiest way is to grow them ourselves. Once we harvest our tomatoes and dehydrate them, the whole of next year, we will have no cause to buy any. Next, we are going into onion production, we make our own palm oil.
Our decision was borne out of necessity to control costs and we have to utilise the land and natural resources around us.
Additionally, we were able to get people from the local community in Oko to work in our building sites to generate decent income. The road marking in the ongoing construction of the Omu-Aran road project by the Kwara State Government was done by our 200 level engineering students.
For us here, it is not just about studying, you must get your hands dirty and that is why as the vice chancellor, I also teach. Though I was a city girl and was having my post-doctorate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), I drive tractors myself even though I had never farmed in my life before now.
We have to keep the system running and growing using what we have. That has been our main propelling factor.
In the whole of Kwara South, none of the universities offers medical programmes except Thomas Adewumi University (TAU). We need partnership and more committed people to build more hostels, staff accommodation and aid. We have won close to $100,000 in grants since I came, in addition to the $75,000 announced just last night.
Aside from the training the students are receiving, what other thing is the university doing to make its graduates outstanding?
The National Open College Network (NOCN), formerly known as the Open College Network, is a United Kingdom organisation developed to recognise informal learning achieved by adults.
The NOCN certificate is for our students to get additional skills with a certificate recognised by the UK government. And for any student to graduate here, they must earn a minimum of two ICT certificates from the various ones we have which include Oracle, Microsoft and others.
We do practically everything ourselves and for us to take even our vehicle outside to the mechanics, it must be beyond us. As a degree-awarding university, we partnered with the NOCN to issue UK government trade certification whether in carpentry or any skill.
Our engineering students also benefit from this highly valued arrangement. This year, we are starting a new programme, Basic Household Maintenance and every student must learn how to change faulty sockets and lamp holders, and install and repair leaking sinks, among others, rather than looking for artisans.
This will make them unique from other institutions because we are already preparing them for the life ahead.
Where do you see TAU in the next 5 years?
In the next five years, I see TAU becoming the leading private university in Nigeria. Though this is quite ambitious, we have seen the trajectory and know we can achieve it just like we are doing with the ranking from 252 in Nigeria when I was appointed, to 152 within a month and 39th now by Times Higher Education.
In Kwara, we have outranked some universities that started before us. And we are confident that with the commitment of our founder, staff and cooperation of the parents, we will get there in no distant time.
One of the major criteria in ranking universities is the number of foreign students they have, do you have many?
Yes, we have students from across sub-Saharan Africa studying on our campus. We have the MIT open course where our students take exams with students from that prestigious and highly-rated institution competing with students across the world and Africa. We have students from Tanzania, Zanzibar, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Algeria and other English-speaking sub-Saharan African countries.
We just got a license to host the Arabic and French versions as well for students from non-English speaking countries to study here virtually.
We also have students on exchange programmes.
How prepared is the varsity to run the medical courses?
Our medicine will be highly sought after because we are going to do things differently. Our physiotherapy clinic, which we built ourselves, is the second largest in Kwara State.
We stand out for excellence in everything we do. We are a one-student university, every student gets attention for whatever it is. We don’t do half-measures and are very committed; that is the difference.
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