• Insists: ‘No anointed candidate’ll succeed me’
From Aloysius Attah, Onitsha
Vice Chancellor, Nnamdi Azikiwe University (UNIZIK), Awka, Anambra State, Professor Charles Esimone, is in his final year in office. He speaks on university administration, funding and academic excellence among others.
How far have you succeeded in your Project 200 ACADA vision being the template of your administration?
In the world university rankings for 2024, UNIZIK ranked in Category A at number 12 position in Nigeria and in the 1,500 band in the world. This is a great jump from 4494 in the world as at 2019 during the early stages of my administration. I started with Project 200, which was to make UNIZIK among the best 200 universities in the world and the first 10 in Sub-Saharan Africa and first in Nigeria.
That was the mission, the vision, and the overall goal. We anticipated that within the five years, I will serve as a Vice Chancellor, it is accomplishable but then, we didn’t factor the protracted ASUU strike and COVID-19 disruptions. But the good thing is that we are moving up as we speak.
There are a lot of issues responsible for this global visibility presently. The first is the digital update. The world is now digital and whatever you want to do to be visible you must be able to go digital. Our system has changed, and the method of administration, academic delivery, and method of interaction has even changed too, they are all digitalised now. I see that as one of the things that helped us to move the institution up.
Right now, our appraisals are done digitally. One of the things I did was to make sure that all staff and students had their signature email bearing UNIZIK’s identity. Before now, the principal officers were having Yahoo mail or Gmail. I said no, we need to rebrand our university.
We now have Unizik.edu.ng as our email. We were able to streamline that for everybody. I made sure we had our institution’s name in our emails and other digital devices. If you are talking about international visibility and they cannot identify you with your emails that is already a minus.
Though it was difficult changing the psyche of both the staff and students to that because they were already used to the old order. I insisted on institutional email because it is a brand; we needed to sell our university. On our appraisal system, which is a recent development, our appraisals today are now done digitally.
Digital traffic is a major factor in our visibility. Before now, our external assessors had to carry big bags of documents but that era is gone now. I can say that students’ clearance is no longer a problem, our transcripts have also gone digital. For a student to do the clearance, we want to launch something within the next few months.
After the launch, students don’t need to queue up to do their transcripts. Once it is launched, you can do your clearance and transcripts in the comfort of your rooms, hostels, or anywhere. We are now also mainstreaming our Internet connectivity.
How do you think universities could address the issue of funding challenges?
We have come to realise that getting funds to run the university is becoming increasingly difficult. We need to focus on two things, endowment and alumni. We are strengthening the alumni which are a big financial base; I have checked everywhere. We are talking about school fee increments; it cannot even solve the problem of funding in the universities.
Endowment and alumni are bigger than all these school fees and other things we’re talking about. We are strengthening our alumni to make sure that anybody who has passed through the university will contribute. Even if they contribute N100 each, the base will solve the university administration.
I discovered this very late in my administration, but we are working on it. I would like my successor to focus on it. If he does that, there will be a lot of funds for him to run the institution. Whether you like it or not, university funding is dwindling and without funds nobody can run a university.
I got a lot of endowments and many things I did in the university were from endowments. Almost all the major structures you are seeing in the university are done through endowments. The endowment is either from the government, National Assembly members, private organisations, or individuals.
Getting every alumnus is our priority. We are creating a website where we showcase our alumni of the week, month and of the year. I have interacted with the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, London and others. They said their major source of funding is the alumni and not even what the British Government gives them.
What should we expect on your ideal successor?
I want to assure you that the process that will lead to a new management at UNIZIK will be peaceful. There are laid down procedures for the selection and appointment of a Vice Chancellor in the institution.
I have been telling my colleagues in the Senate and the university community that every professor is a potential vice chancellor. But we must follow the laid down procedures. The NUC has over 10 years ago stated the guidelines; steps and qualifications that should be met for one to qualify to be vice-chancellor.
We have to religiously follow that guideline. There is no anointed candidate. The position of vice chancellor is a sensitive position that demands every sense of responsibility. The template for the appointment of the vice-chancellor of a university is clear and it has not changed.
How are you handling the fuss generated by the installation of CCTV camera in offices and classrooms?
The CCTV is a phase thing. It will save the students. When you see that some people are just so careless about some of these key issues of sexual harassment, extortion and sorting to pass exam. We are starting with classrooms. We are still deliberating on that of offices.
They have given their reasons CCTV will not be installed in their offices. But I told them that office is not a private apartment of anybody. However, some people have one or two reasons but then, we will look into those reasons. We will sit down again and look into their reasons.
In modern offices, they use what is called open offices. I was telling some of them that the project is to help them because some of them don’t want to hold themselves in one way or the other. We don’t want to heat up the system because of that. Meanwhile, we have installed CCTV cameras in many classrooms.
How are handling sexual harassment of students and other vices in UNIZIK?
We have had a town hall meeting with students and we encouraged and asked them to speak out. We are launching “operation-speak-out, if–you-are-oppressed.” Majority of the students are afraid of speaking out because some of the lecturers are threatening them.
Some have spoken out and I’ve set up a committee to investigate. We have five or six cases of harassment we are investigating. I told the students that what we are doing is to protect them.
I assured them that nobody would harass them and go free. Once I see the case, I will follow it up. I have zero tolerance for sexual harassment. In my faculty, the Faculty of Pharmacy, I sacked one of my boys. I brought him into the university from a company and nobody believed I could sack him. He did not even believe I could sack him. Everybody knew he was my boy.
We followed due process, investigated him and we found him guilty and I had to sack him. If you like, be my brother, my wife or anybody. Once you are found in that position, you are gone. I told the students that they should be rest assured that if they give information, it must be followed to a logical conclusion.