Renowned medical scholar and former Provost of College of Medicine, University of Ibadan (COMUI), Professor Oladosu Akanbi Ojengbede has proposed a five-point agenda to stem the systemic rot in the premier tertiary institution.
He made this proposition in his presentation titled, “Body Scan of the Great University of Ibadan in the Eye of a 50-year Sojourn,” on August 14 at the Monthly Workshop for Well-Informed Workforce (MWWW), which took place at the Paul Hendrickse Lecture Theatre of CoMUI.
Emeritus Prof. Ojengbede, whose association with UI spans almost six decades during which he also served as Acting Vice Chancellor, recommended formative student-lecturer interaction, promotion of academic leadership and standards, funding of relevant researches, judicious utilisation of technology and the building of leadership succession into every system to shore up declining education standards.
Going down memory lane on the heydays of the premier university, Professor Ojengbede who was among the 1967 set of the institution, noted that during the glorious era of UI, admission process was very transparent, the lecturers were globally recognized and dedicated while the university’s facilities were topnotch.
He said the student-lecturer ratio was optimal and relationships were fantastic and close, with lecturers and students taking refreshments together at break times thus making the interaction between them extend beyond academic work to include social activities and mentorship.
“Lectures were not postponed and lateness was never tolerated… People were more focused and had a lot of opportunities for grants… They gave us the best … they provided wide opportunities for the few students while the university provided an environment for all-round development.
‘’As a student, there was opportunity to be a tutorial lecturer and you were paid for it… People moved from the Administrative Department and Non-Academic Section to the Academic Department… They will allow you to fulfill your dreams. The system supported them and they supported the system which also supported excellent performance… and they used all that to develop the system… But now it is no longer so’’. He lamented that the increase in the number of federal, state and private tertiary institutions in the country can not keep pace with the ever-ballooning yearly student enrollment population over the years.
Professor Ojengbede further argued that contemporary challenges such as higher student-teacher ratio, inadequate and deteriorating infrastructure, poor record-keeping leading to loss of institutional memory and declining academic standard conspire to bedevil the University of Ibadan.
He pointed out that UI, as the first university in the country, is the pace-setter in many areas especially academic expansion as it has served as the womb from which other great universities such as University of Calabar, University of Jos, University of Ilorin were conceived and birthed.He mentioned that UI also pioneered the process of staff schools with the UI Staff School, International School, Ibadan (ISI) and Abadina School. He reiterated that the institution should spare no effort in continuing to not only carry the torch of academic excellence and rigour it has been renowned for but raise the standard.
While rounding off his lecture, Professor Ojengbede traced the genesis of the rot in Nigeria’s tertiary education to a moving incident during General Yakubu Gowon’s era as Nigeria’s Head of State, when lecturers embarked on a strike to protest deteriorating facilities in universities.
