Why Open University is relevant to national needs, by Jegede
WE bring you the concluding part of our interview with the pioneer Vice Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Prof. Olugbemiro Jegede. In this final part, Jegede talks about the intrigues that trailed the founding and nurturing of the institution, the challenges he faced as well as his achievements. ROTIMI LAWRENCE OYEKANMI conducted the interview, the first part of which was published last Thursday. Excerpts:
How has the funding pattern affected the operations of the National Open University in the last five years?
Yes, you are right about funding being the greatest problem of federal universities. Although no institution can ever get enough of funding, we certainly cannot say that we have the barest minimum to operate with at the Open University. Ours as a new university has some unfortunate twists to it, which have caused many of our problems today. Government must find one way or another to resolve them.
NOUN has come to stay and government must nurture its baby to healthy adulthood. Doing this means not starving it of funds otherwise, the growth will be stunted. When we first started in 2002, I told government in no uncertain terms that we would require at least N4.5 billion for the take off. This was not done. We got only N2.5 billion, which went to the Federal Ministry of Education on NOUN's behalf and some it was spent on FME activities and not on NOUN. Even those spent on NOUN were not done with our consent or properly used. I recall that in 2002, I had to barge into the Board meeting of the Education Trust Fund (ETF) to beg for money for course material development. God bless Mrs. Toyin Olakunri, who was the chairman then. They were very magnanimous to have given us N200 million we used in developing the first set of course materials, which only represented 10 per cent of the total of the materials we required. Had we done everything then, it would have been cheaper, cost effective and straight to the point. Doing this now will cost us nothing less than N1.8 billion.
For three years, we did not enter the normal Federal Government annual fiscal budget. When we did, the appropriation for capital projects has been on the decrease. Three years ago, we got about N1.7 billion, but last year and this year it was drastically reduced to N300 million each when we needed to heighten our development of study centres. Putting us together with conventional institutions or through the ministry is not the best.
We are often told that budgeting cannot exceed the size of the envelope. Nobody has told us whether the envelope is A4 or A5, or B5 size. What shocks me is the level of indecision and the intractable malaise of fire fighting thinking or belated thinking. Many of us cannot think outside the box and hardly does NOUN get the sympathy of those who make the budget in the Federal Ministry of Education, for once, give us lump sum for full development. Since we cater for the public who for one reason or the other cannot raise all the fees they require, government since 2003 instructed us to mark down by 40 per cent the usual cost of producing our course materials given to the students. Since government has not provided for this subsidy, our cost recovery fees we charge the students are already depleted by 40 per cent. If you add annual inflation, this might go up to 60 per cent. So a new university, struggling to exist is reduced to having only about 40 per cent of its cost recovered through fees. This, of course, to accountants means operating in deficit all the year round.
Funding has been my greatest concern, as it is at the heart of all our operations. If we got the money needed now, I can assure the nation that within nine months, the university will be full grown and we can go places without hesitation. Students will have all the course materials they so badly need, our tutorials will be the best and our infrastructure will be well developed.
The Nigerian public must realise that any country that wishes to succeed educationally cannot leave everything to government to finance. All stakeholders should and must join forces to finance education. Honestly, I must say that we at NOUN have been very disappointed with the lack of support from the private sector. They have been tentative; some have ignored our plight, others prefer to sponsor other activities that are enduring to the public. The glamour and show type of sponsorship, which do little to promote education or long lasting national development are what interest them. There is nothing wrong in sponsoring other sectorial activities, but we need to get our priorities right and do the needful at the time expected. As an optimist, I am very hopeful that the trend of financial drought at NOUN will soon be reversed and things will be great as planned.
Why do you think the Open University system is relevant to Nigeria's developmental needs?
I can spend a lifetime talking about the relevance of the Open University system to our national development. The social and economic dimensions of providing education for all, within the context of prevailing national circumstances of dwindling financial and other resources in the face of development needs, are heavy. The ever-continuing growth in Nigeria's population, the attendant escalating demand for education at all levels, the difficulty of resourcing education through the traditional means of face-to-face classroom bound mode, and the compelling need to provide education for all irrespective of environmental, social or cultural circumstances, have meant that the country must, of necessity, find the appropriate and cost effective means to respond adequately to the huge unmet demand for education.
Given the astronomical numbers to deal with, the diverse nature of the unmet demands, the constraints of resources, the need for flexible tailor-made delivery of instruction with little disruption in the national, family and individual circumstances and taking advantages of emerging information communication technologies (ICTs) in relation to Nigeria's peculiar situation, the most logical pathway is by the distance education method. Distance education has been tested by almost all countries of the world as the most viable, robust, reliable, efficient, effective and cost-beneficial, to provide massive and equitable access to education. Once put in place, distance education method is versatile enough to form a significant aspect of a nation's educational infrastructure, capable of use by almost all sectors of economy and amenable to special national circumstances.
There is the tremendous need to meet the demands for education at all levels and by all sectors. Nigeria must urgently step up its use of education for various reasons, including using it as the basic foundation for national development, poverty eradication, provision of the much needed human and other resources for national development, boosting rural economy and eliminating illiteracy and boosting technological and computer literacy. Therefore, it does appear crystal clear that the way forward for Nigeria is to embrace open and distance education using both hands and supported by all necessary financial and infrastructural commitments.
To finance the nation's total demand for education, with a view to providing education for all is colossal and would over-stretch all the available resources. Indeed, no country has yet been able to meet the demand for education for all through the formal classroom-bound system of education. As has been done in most developed and developing countries of the world, the education sector must explore cost effective means to deliver education to all our people. The answer, from the abundance of experience of many countries including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, China, South Africa, India, Tanzania, Kenya and Zimbabwe, lies in open and distance education.
The continuing global educational and economic realities have also forced changes in the way nations view education. For instance, the emerging concept of education has changed from an elitist-based to mass higher education, recognised the exponential growth in knowledge with reduced half-life, embraced the shift from an industrial-based to information-based global economy and accepted the emergence and consequent effect on education for all of a postmodern view of knowledge generation. These changes have pointed to the need for a comprehensive search for educational solutions, which include open and distance education as a central focus. As a result, all nations of the world, especially the developing countries, desirous of a cost-effective, convenient, conducive, efficient and comprehensive way to educate all its citizens, have embraced open and distance learning.
What were the goals you had set for 2009? Are you on course, and if not why?
We have been very modest in our goals set for 2009 in view of all the challenges touched upon earlier. We did not want to run the risk of regretting or explaining away why we have not attained the goals. But I am pleased with what we have achieved so far as a university in a fairy hostile environment, which displays gross ignorance in what ODL (Open Distance Learning) and NOUN mean.
One of the goals was graduating the students who had completed their programmes. This we did on the January 7th 2009. We are preparing for the next graduation in due course.
The second was increasing the student population. As mentioned earlier, we have offered admission to 100,000 students so far. It is hoped that by our next admission, we would have admitted over 120,000. However, due to the nature of studying at a distance, the number of the fully enrolled, at any given time, is often less than the admitted list.
We have created and moved all our course materials to a central national warehouse in Kaduna. This will hold all our study materials and they will be distributed from there to all other parts of the country. We planned that by the end of the year, almost all the states would have a study centre. We have achieved this, except for Kebbi and Ebonyi states that are yet to give us a location for the centre in those states. We planned that by the end of 2009, we would have built the scaffolding for an e-university. I am so pleased that we have achieved this.
Almost all our major processes as a university are now done online. These include admission, registration, learning online, accessing the library and other resources electronically and, now e-examinations. We successfully tested our e-examinations outlay last on November 14, through the CEMBA/CEMBA admission examinations. It has shown that the online examination works.
From now on, there will be no more pen and paper examinations at NOUN. We planned that by the end of this year, we would have begun the hands-on experience for our students who take agriculture-related and science and technology programmes. This is to enable them practice all they would have learnt and set them on the road to self-employment.
I am pleased to report that we have initiated several projects in this regard and they are based at our Kaduna campus where we have quite a lot of land space. They include water processing and bottling plant, animal husbandry through which we produce yoghurt and raise several cattle, fisheries, vineyard, guava, citrus, mango, garden eggs and other plantations. These are doing very well and the Federal House of Representatives Committee on Education visited the projects recently.
One other goal set for 2009, which we have achieved is extending our international recognition globally in addition to the recognition given to us by UNESCO and the Commonwealth of Learning (COL). We are certainly close to, if not the number one open and distance learning institution in Africa. Through our Regional Training and Development Institute for Open and Distance Learning (RETRIDAL), we have provided capacity building in all aspects of ODL to countries in the West African region and other parts of Africa, including Tanzania and Cameroon. The Quality Assurance and Accreditation Agency, being set up by the African Council for Distance Education (ACDE) is in Nigeria and being midwifed by NOUN. An added value to our establishment as a university is that I currently hold the chairmanship/presidency of the African Council for Distance Education.
Are you convinced that the Open University can deliver education with standard quality content as people envisage the conventional ones do?
That, again, stems from ignorance and subjectivity. Learning through ODL is as rigorous as, if not more demanding than, face to face full time conventional studies. Those who have passed through us would attest to this. The quality is sound and our curriculum is based on the minimum academic standards set by the NUC. For us, we embellish student studies with loads of learning resources and we instruct through a variety of media, including text, radio, audio, video, CD, web, etc.
Some of our students, who graduated last January, are already reporting enhanced status at work and receiving accolades and commendations. We know for a fact that the best lawyers in the UK are now being produced by their open university system, while in Australia, the best engineers are produced through the ODL system. The Open University of Hong Kong produces the best IT specialists and business graduates in Asia. So, if we do ours right, there is no reason why our system and graduates cannot rival the best anywhere in the world. We have just started the Commonwealth of Learning Executive MBA and Executive MPA. Anyone who successfully goes through the 18-month programme can find jobs anywhere in the 53 countries of the Commonwealth. Show me the acceptance level of our face-to-face graduates in the world right now! I think we have an Open University we can be proud of and Nigerians should wake up to that fact and embrace us as the only alternative for providing quality enhanced access to tertiary education.
If a student were to ask you why he or she should opt for tertiary education at the university, what would you say?
I would ask him to read this interview and dwell on each sentence, because they all make up the reason why NOUN is the number university to strike one's mind when considering how to study through the flexible mode in this 21st century.
Students can come in to register for one or many courses at their time and study where and how they choose. The student determines when to take his examinations and can fit everything to suit his working or domestic life. We provide education at an affordable, cost effective manner and we rival all other open universities in the world, as well as provide curricula which conventional universities provide.
For the modern day life-long learning and education for all, NOUN should be the first university to consider. We are the only university in this country with 39 study centres providing counseling and high powered tutorials, just as we are the only university in Nigeria with over 500,000 volumes of learning resources in our online library. What more can I say? Our NOUN anthem says it all. I refer readers to our website to read or sing along with me our NOUN anthem for them to see what we offer and what we mean to the learning world.
How would you describe your experience as vice chancellor of this institution? How has internal governance been like for you?
It has been most challenging as VC of this great university; more challenging than I have ever had in other countries I have worked in. When I first came to Nigeria, things were strange, the expectations of people were difficult to comprehend, and their orientation and thinking were inexplicable. People want things done shoddily and expect that you lower your standards. I had staff who ODL was getting into their vocabulary for the first time. So, till date, getting many of my colleagues, who we had to recruit from the conventional institutions, to imbibe the culture of ODL has been an uphill task. I virtually have to lecture people at every opportunity. I have learnt a lot really and have come to realise that being na•ve about other people's level of understanding can be dangerous.
Just as you are thinking of how to make things better, there are those working at cross purpose even within your organisation, and indeed, even those most close to you. Many work for your failure but pretend and engage in eye service. Once I am not around in the university, even senior officers take off only to be the first to appear at my office the very day I get back from Abuja or wherever, giving wonderful accounts of whatever they should have done but did not do! It is absurd. It has been very tough. I have spent the best part of my professional years establishing NOUN at the expense of my professional, academic, personal, family and domestic life to the extent that I really do not have any life of my own anymore. I live, sleep, wake and breath NOUN and carry files with me all over the country and the world no matter where I go.
I had so many files and information on my computer, which I was hoping to use for my memoirs. Many of the files are first and rare content on all communications and documentation for the establishment of NOUN. Sadly, I was robbed at gunpoint in South Africa in February last year and they stole the computer. I had no back up and so lost everything.
It was former President Olusegun Obasanjo who forced, encouraged and cajoled me come to establish NOUN. He is a wonderful person who ensures he achieves what he sets his mind to. A couple of times, he literally stopped me going back to overseas. Nigeria has a lot to thank that man for, even in education and especially the establishment of NOUN. He not only established it, he tested it, as if telling the world that I need to certify for myself the Open University I have established for the people. He remains a role model in this regard for all.
When you leave office for higher calling, what would you like to be remembered for as VC of NOUN?
Yes, that is as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, I will leave one day and very soon too. But I don't know about higher calling! When I leave NOUN, I would walk with my head high on my shoulders, out of the gates of the university without looking back, but very satisfied that I came, saw nothing on ground but used the little I got to build such a great edifice which no one can stamp out or destroy. It is a lasting legacy for centuries to come, and I am honoured to have been given the opportunity to use my God given resources to make my small contribution to educational development in Nigeria. Given all I have been through in establishing NOUN, it is only by the grace of God that we are where we are today. I am reminded through Isaiah 7:9 which says "If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all."
I wish to be remembered as one who stood firm on his promise to Nigeria to establish and deliver a strong, virile internationally recognised open university, that will meet the needs of Nigeria and beyond, and who in spite of all odds, delivered.
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When I leave NOUN, I would walk with my head high on my shoulders, out of the gates of the university without looking back, but very satisfied that I came, saw nothing on ground but used the little I got to build such a great edifice which no one can stamp out or destroy. It is a lasting legacy for centuries to come, and I am honoured to have been given the opportunity to use my God given resources to make my small contribution to educational development in Nigeria
