Professor John Obafunwa, the Vice-Chancellor of the Lagos State University, LASU, in this interview with KAZEEM UGBODAGA speaks on what he met on ground when he took over the leadership of the institution, the aftermath of the school fees hike reversal, and plans to reposition the institution. LASU is getting settled after a prolonged protest for tuition fee review. Now that almost all issues have been resolved what is the next line of action? [caption id="attachment_9247" align="alignleft" width="300"] Professor John Obafunwa[/caption] It is unfortunate that we have had to go through this phase in the history of Lagos State University. We have gone through some turbulence, but I believe it is all for the better. The current interest of parents, the university administration and of course the students themselves will be to make progress with regard to the academic calendar. That is what we are focusing on now. I can tell you we have had series of meeting with the leadership of students’ union. The revised academic calendar is being implemented, though with a little bit of modification. The students have paid their fees. We have re-opened the portals after making adjustment for the new fee structure. We expect that the normal academic calendar will be pursued with all the vigour it requires. The focus is on the academic calendar, for teachers to do what they ought to do and the students to do what they ought to do. We will have exams at the right time so that we can move to the new academic session. We have done other things too. For instance, we have conducted the post-UTME exams. We have made ready our merit list, which will be processed through JAMB. We are looking forward to normal 2014/2015 academic session. What actually informed the decision to revert to the old tuition regime? To start with, it was not completely the decision of the university management. It involved the University Governing Council. It equally involved the Lagos State Government. It is what I can call a joint decision. But it is a welcome decision in a way, depending on who is looking at it or who is commenting on it. There are always good and bad sides to everything. We have reversed the tuition, but do not forget it will not reduce the expenditure of the university. It will still remain the same, if not approaching a kind of upward trend. Whether we like or not, somebody has to take up the bill. The parents or the students will no longer take up the bill, but somebody has to take it up. At this point, I want to say thank you to the Lagos State Government and Lagos State House of Assembly for assisting the Lagos State University. I can only assure our staff and students nothing will happen to all the capital projects on-going in the university. But the students have a role to play. It is not just a question of reversing to the old tuition regime. It is important for the students to take advantage of the reversal. The students need to pay more attention; be more focussed on their programmes, ensure their lecturers do what they are supposed to do; register for the academic year before the deadline and sit for the exams with due preparation. We anticipate some ripple effects as a result of the reversal. We are going to have a lot of applicants. Of course, we must have necessary infrastructure in place to accommodate more students. If we do not have necessary infrastructure in place, there is nothing we can do. The good side is that, if we have more students choosing the institution, it offers an opportunity to choose the best. If we have more students applying this time, our choices would definitely be restricted. In this instance, we have broader top-class or first-class students to do with. So we are preparing our minds towards those things. We expect parents to assist in educating their students to always maintain high standard. Since the tuition has been reversed, is there any plan to refund what the students have paid in excess? We have already calculated it. Do not forget that a lot of them had paid their school fees for this session before the reversal. We have already calculated within what they have been paid in excess. We will soon get to the stage of refunding what has been paid in excess. I do not have the exact figure. But I can tell you that it is over N840 million. We will refund what has been paid in excess for this session. It will not be for two previous sessions. With this reversal, will the university not go back to the old problems? Not necessarily. There were reasons behind the original increase for those who were just coming in at that time. Going back to the old tuition regime will not necessarily amount to going back to the problems of the past. Like I mentioned earlier, you cannot go beyond the available infrastructure. With programmes that the professional bodies already specify the enrolment target, there is nothing we can do about that. If you have an increase in the number of applicants, that will give the university opportunity to admit the best from the list of applicants. So, I do not see any disadvantage in it as long as we look at the admission criteria. Since there has been reversal to the old fees, how do you intend to bridge the gap? With regard to our capital projects, nothing is really going to change. We are not going to have any abandoned project. We have got assurance from the state government. If you go to every site now, you will see that work is on-going regardless of the reversal to the old tuition regime. Governor Babatunde Fashola has already requested the House of Assembly to approve some money to take care of LASU situation. We were in the House of Assembly last week. That is already being handled. I believe we have an opportunity to ask for more. It is not just for the purpose of refunding money, but also for the purpose of increased subvention to tackle things like retirees and day-to-day running of the university among others. We expect positive result. The university remains much focused. Like I said, we were in the state House of Assembly, the discussion was very cordial. That is not to say if we request for N100,000, they approve N100,000 for us. We have to justify everything we request for. One thing this administration is trying to do is to maintain a high level of probity and transparency. We expect that rational decision will be taken. We have already asked for increase in subvention. We have already asked for assistance to do certain things. We remain very optimistic that something will be done quickly. There is really no time. Since your appointment as the Vice-Chancellor of LASU what have been your major challenges? I actually grew up in Nigeria. I attended the University of Lagos. I did my postgraduate studies in Pathology. As far as my working career is concerned, I lectured briefly and went out of the country for about 14 years. I came back and joined Lagos State University based in the College of Medicine, Ikeja. I owe the state government profound gratitude. We were able to improve the place. We were able to achieve a status of making the medical school one of the first five in this country. I do not want to push it further. At the medical college, there were challenges. But coming to Ojo as the vice-chancellor, of course, there are greater challenges. I would not want to say the challenges in LASU are not as a result of differences in human beings we have to deal with. Perhaps, the environment differs to some extent. We had challenges in Ikeja, but we were able surmount them because we were dealing with a smaller number of people. But here in Ojo, we are dealing with a much larger population. People are fixed in the way of doing certain things, whether they are students, teachers or non-teaching staff. In my days in the university, you could not think of going to the office of your VC. In the College of Medicine, who was I then to go to the office of the Provost? There were no reasons for it. You had to register at the time you were supposed to register. It was not for you to ask questions about your school fees or dictating how much you wanted to pay. You were even grateful for being allowed into the place. I know a lot of things have changed. We came here in Ojo and discovered a lot of problems. We had to enforce accountability. We still have the issue of punctuality. Despite that I live close to the state secretariat, I get to work before 8:00 a.m. daily. I leave home 6:30 a.m. so that I can have the moral right to challenge whoever comes late to the office. We try to make our colleagues to be in the classrooms at the time they are supposed to be there and make scripts at the time they are supposed to mark it. I inherited a system whereby a student would tell me he was in 400 Level and had not seen any of his results from 100 Level. We have changed the registration system in the university. We started from the departments and for the HODs to know the number of students in their departments. We have moved away from a situation whereby results were delayed for years to a situation the results have to be released within four weeks, going through a particular format and trying to minimise, if not exclude, a kind of interaction between students and lecturers at the exam time. In 2012, results were released after four weeks. In 2013, results were released after four weeks. After the January 2014 strike, we got result out in three weeks. This administration has signed over 20,000 certificates. Once the Senate is through with the results, the certificate section is supposed to prepare the list. Of course, we require a situation where the students, particularly those in external campuses, will need to provide certain information as basic as their photographs. This is because their photographs have to be imprinted on their certificates. They have to get their clearance papers signed all over the place. Despite that we turned out the results on time, some of them still refused to do their clearance. These are parts of the problems we met, but we have been trying to clear them. I have signed the certificates of 1994. That should not be happening. Another area this administration inherited a big problem has to do with external campuses. I believe we have solved most of the problems there. Since issues with the various unions in the school have been resolved, are the staff ready for a stable academic session? Be that as it may, non-academic staff unions have been on ground for a long time. Also, the National Association of Technologists has been on ground as well. The academic union has been back. The students themselves are quite happy, participating in the last convocation. There are still some little issues with SSANU. But all those issues are being resolved. I just spent about two and half hours discussing with the SSANU leadership. Every person appreciates the importance of having stable academic calendar. I can tell you we have all resolved to break from the past and pursue normal and stable academic calendar. With the submission that has been made already, at what percentage will the subvention of the university go up? It will be very hasty of me to give a definite figure. I do not want to appear as if I wanted to pre-empt them or box them into a corner. I am being honest that they are planning to do something. We have been told and it will be done. To what extent it will be done I do not really know. It is even possible that I ask for N5 and somebody will say what you need is N7. What is the possibility of speeding up the implementation of the master plan of the school due to the reversal of the tuition increase? In fairness to this administration, the projects you see around were commenced two and half years ago, precisely around December 2011 and January 2012. The projects include the new Students’ Arcade, the Twin Lecture Theatre in the Faculty of Law, the Senate Building, the new Central Library, the new Faculty of Science Complex and the Lagos HOMS, which is behind the major road. The state government has tentatively approved about ten buildings, but three are under construction right now. Each of them will house ten flats for academic staff. But apart from that, the administration, with the assistance of government, embarked on the refurbishment of the three-in-one lecture theatre around the Faculty of Education, which has been completed. We are doing the furnishing of the language laboratory in the Faculty of Arts. We intend to expedite action with regard to the Faculty of Science Complex. It will be completed in two months. Luckily, a philanthropist came to our aid in respect of LASU Radio. Already, the building has been completed. It is just waiting to be commissioned. All these things have been happening in the last two and half years. Do not forget we are not the only child of Lagos State. Do we still have other things that we want? The answer is yes. We plan for the new Faculty of Arts as well as the new Faculty of Education. We still need to expand the current Faculty of Social Sciences. We have completed the School of Transport. So the truth of the matter is that nobody has said despite the tuition reversal, they will come to our aid in respect of these projects. The state government will always come to our aid, I have no doubt in my mind; although we need to create the right atmosphere on our part for the government to assist us. We cannot engage in strikes all the time and expect the state government to come to our aid. We need peaceful atmosphere to allow for development, even though Lagos HOMS started in the middle of the strike. But there is a lot we can achieve if we have a peaceful environment. We are expecting some assistance from the federal level. We will inject the fund from the federal level according to what it is meant for. We have already identified the classrooms we need to renovate. We have already identified the hostels we need to renovate. We have identified the lecture theatres we need to refurbish. We are just waiting for the funds. We are not depending on the state government strictly. All the funds we are expecting from Abuja have been declared to the state government. It is not that we are hiding anything. In all, we are expecting about N1.3 billion from the Federal Ministry of Education through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund.