‘As custodians of higher education ... we cannot fail our people’

It has been asserted that, apart from the Black Death of the Middle Ages in Europe and the Spanish Influenza of 1918, which spread to every nook and cranny of the world (except the tiny island of St Helena), nothing like the present COVID-19 pandemic has ever shaken the world health system to its foundations.

The emergence of COVID-19 challenged leaders at all levels to adjust their way of working and to inspire their people to do the same.

Among the various measures adopted to curtail the spread of the disease were wearing face masks, frequent washing of hands with soap and alcohol-based sanitisers, and physical distancing (avoiding crowds and staying home, only going out when absolutely necessary).

The onset of the pandemic also provided leaders in the higher education sector with opportunities to learn and explore solutions to new challenges, to think outside the box and to bring out the best, both in themselves and in their people. Let me share my experience.

Lessons learned

One of the corollaries of the COVID-19 pandemic was the imposition of day and night curfews (lockdown) in several states of the Nigerian federation. At first, Lagos, Ogun and Abuja experienced lockdowns in April 2020 but, later, other states, including Akwa Ibom, had to impose partial lockdown to stem the increasing tide of the pandemic.

Even before the imposition of the lockdown by both federal and state governments, the National Universities Commission had ordered that universities in the country be closed for one month, from 23 March to 22 April 2020, to mitigate the spread of the virus on university campuses.

In spite of this situation, as one of the principal officers of the university, I had to adjust to working more from home than from the office. During this period of great apprehension and uncertainty, I learned several key lessons, which I will now discuss.

Willingness to continuously learn is the hallmark of true leaders

There was an urgent need to migrate from face-to-face activities, such as meetings, to virtual interactions via platforms such as Zoom, Skype, and so forth.

As an educator, I know that learning never ends, but sometimes it could be challenging to learn so much within a very short timespan.

Thankfully, most modern information communication technological devices such as computers and smartphones are user-friendly and interactive, hence it was not too difficult for me to adjust to the new normal. Thus, I am pleased to say, none of my duties was adversely affected by the restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Concern for people

This manifested through the provision of both physical and moral support to staff in my office and in the university at large. At times, it was necessary to provide financial incentives (sustenance allowance) for staff who made sacrifices to still come to the office when the need arose.

The period of the first wave of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown also coincided with one of the longest periods of strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities and, as usual, it was very difficult getting ardent members of the union to shift ground at times when the management had to carry out programmes and activities necessary to move the university forward.

To win over the union members, we had to adopt a conciliatory approach by empathising with them (the government had not paid lecturers for as many as six months) while appealing to their humanity and sense of justice.

Prudent management of resources

In the Bible, Joseph is renowned for organising the people of Egypt to stock surplus food during the seven years of abundance as a cushion to hunger and starvation during the coming seven years of famine.

With the benefit of hindsight, I could say that I had adopted certain strategies for discharging my responsibilities in a way that helped me to continue to function in spite of the restrictions imposed by the challenges of the pandemic.

For example, I had tremendously reduced bureaucratic methods of handling mail or correspondence in favour of using the electronic and smart technology. I had phone numbers of most internal and external persons I interacted with in the course of my duty, and most of the time I had to work on the phone.

Thus, I was able to get real-time feedback on matters, instead of waiting for written correspondence to be sent to me.

Involving people

Fortunately, I am blessed with very diligent, resourceful and hardworking staff. At times, I had to respond to urgent official matters at short notice, and I had to rely on them to get the job done.

Moreover, all of them are computer literate and, with the need to switch from manual activities to online operations, their skills to use a computer and allied devices (and programmes) were very useful.

In the University of Uyo in the past three years, we have used digital resources, which have drastically reduced the use of printed papers at gatherings such as senate meetings. I am proud to say that the capable staff at my disposal have contributed immensely to my adapting to the new ways of doing things with ease.

In summary, I learned that, while techniques, procedures and guidelines are important at work, people are the most important asset of all. My willingness and ability to work with various people contributed immensely to achieving some goals within a record time.

Pertinent challenges in the next decade

For generations, universities all over the world have been looked upon as beacons of enlightenment, hope and emancipation of the total human from the vestiges of barbarism, superstition and primordial thinking and behaviour.

The 21st century has presented higher education leaders with unique challenges, some of which are international in scope and dimensions. The most important challenges leaders in the higher education sector will grapple with in the next 10 years are discussed below.

Defining reality

It was world-renowned motivational speaker John Maxwell who said that the first task of a leader is to define reality. In the same vein, philosopher Warren Bennis opined that “leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality”.

One could enumerate a dozen challenges facing contemporary Nigerian tertiary education leaders – from poor, low or falling standards of education within and without the university system, poor funding, incessant strikes by unions, student unrest or rampage, to the alarming rate of insecurity facing us.

However, it is pertinent to narrow the focus to what may be termed the ‘silent scourge’ threatening the university system – the apparent delay in redesigning the curriculum of Nigerian higher educational institutions to give practical attention to entrepreneurship. The reality is that the government at all levels is neither willing nor able to provide jobs for most Nigerians.

According to available statistics, Nigeria has an unemployment rate of more than 50%; the country’s institutions of higher education graduate more than 250,000 students each year, and the economy has experienced two recessions since 2015.

While the Federal Office of Statistics said that about 500,000 jobs are created per year in Nigeria and the present federal government claims to have lifted 10 million Nigerians out of poverty, the reality is that over 100 million persons in Nigeria experience unemployment in one form or another.

The Nigerian federal government, through the National Directorate of Employment, Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria, and the Ministry of Labour and Employment, seems to have had some success in training some Nigerians, especially the youths, in employment and wealth creation, though the gains of such schemes have been truncated by insincerity on the part of both the administrators of the schemes and the trainees.

It is time for a paradigm shift, a far-reaching change, to take place, and it is my well-informed opinion that universities are strategically placed to lead the change.

Why should we expect the universities to provide a solution to a problem that the government and its ministries, agencies and parastatals, with all the funds and resources at their disposal, could not solve?

The answer lies in understanding what is expected of the university in the 21st century.

The renowned academic Josemaria Escriva asserts that “a university must play a primary role in contributing to human progress”, and in present-day Nigeria, one of the problems that must be urgently addressed is the provision of employment for the teeming populace.

Since the notion of waiting on the government and its agencies to provide jobs for the majority of Nigerians has failed, it is time a different approach is fashioned to address the problem.

No institution is better positioned than the university to be the pioneer or driver of the search for a solution to the problem.

Professor Patrick Utomi, while presenting the keynote address at the 23rd convocation of the University of Uyo in 2015, said that “educating for the 21st century will have to involve preparing people, in a time of rapid change, to understand and engage different cultures and challenges, in a manner that demonstrates character, trust, understanding, competence, and emotional intelligence”.

Hence, the university as a beacon of enlightenment and hope to the Nigerian society has the capacity and indeed responsibility of finding a permanent solution to the seemingly intractable problem of unemployment.

Achieving financial autonomy

With the apparent reluctance, negligence or refusal of the government at different levels to fund education (less than 5% of the budget, at national or state level, is allocated to education) both in terms of providing requisite infrastructure and ensuring fair and equitable remuneration for staff of tertiary institutions, the reality is that, within the next 10 years, university administrators must explore alternative sources of funding, at least to supplement whatever inflows come from the government.

The 2021 Democracy Day speech of President Muhammadu Buhari should be a wake-up call to Nigerian university administrators to source alternative funding from their ‘friends’, donor agencies, foundations and corporations, both local and international.

One of the goals of such a shift in the dependence on the government for funding would be the attainment of true financial autonomy by our institutions of higher education. This is not a new phenomenon, but it has been the practice and mainstay of many universities in Europe and America.

Leading the quest for commercial use of green energy in Nigeria

The reality of climate change is being experienced on a daily basis in many countries, and Nigeria is not an exception.

With our location in the tropics, it has been claimed by some experts that extreme climate change could further worsen conditions in Sub-Saharan African countries.

The increasing rate of floods in different parts of the country, incidents of ‘black’ (acid) rain, unabated gas flaring, pollution of rivers and other bodies of water and destruction of arable land due to oil exploration are pointers to an urgent need for a switch to renewable, green energy by the country.

Proffering solution to the problems of insecurity and HIV/AIDS prevalence

The university has been defined as an institution where research or community service could be undertaken. Since research must meet the real needs or challenges of the university’s immediate environment, it follows that, at this time of widespread insecurity, the university ought to be looked to for a solution to the emergency in the area of security.

For example, the search for a cure to the dreaded HIV/AIDS scourge is ongoing, and with Nigeria ranked fourth in the prevalence of the epidemic (as at 2020) by the World Health Organization, one of the cardinal objectives of the postgraduate programmes of departments, faculties and colleges in the life, health and clinical sciences should be the undertaking of research into a cure for the disease.

It is incumbent on leaders of Nigeria’s numerous tertiary institutions to come to terms with the fact that their institutions, and not the government ministries, departments and parastatals, will fashion the road map that would take the country out of the woods to the expected Eldorado.

This would require close ties between these institutions, themselves, and relevant stakeholders such as industry and international organisations.

Survival instinct

Nigeria is indeed blessed with abundant human and material resources. Additionally, providence has blessed us, not necessarily with the best in terms of industrial, scientific or technological infrastructure, but with a survival instinct and wherewithal that defies conventional wisdom.

This is apparent from the way the country dealt with the Ebola virus disease in 2014 and with the present pandemic of COVID-19.

However, we must make hay while the sun shines. The lessons that we, as a nation, could have learned from the Ebola virus outbreak of 2014 were actually lost on us as the COVID-19 pandemic caught us off guard.

There was little or no health infrastructure on the ground to handle the magnitude of the pandemic, health workers were and are still either embarking on or threatening to embark on strike and our colleges of medicine and medical research institutes are still poorly funded.

As custodians of higher education in Nigeria, we cannot afford to fail our people as, unfortunately, it seems our political leaders have.

As the cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead said, “a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change world”. I dare say that a group of determined intellectuals can change a nation’s destiny. Now is the time to take action.

This commentary has been written by Nyaudoh Ndaeyo, a professor of farming systems agronomy and the vice-chancellor of the University of Uyo, Uyo, Nigeria.

Vice-chancellors will participate in discussions about the future of higher education at the Conference of Rectors, Vice-Chancellors and Presidents of African Universities (COREVIP), an assembly of the chief executive officers of member institutions or their representatives of the Association of African Universities (AAU). The AAU’s general conference and COREVIP’s biennial meeting takes place from 5-8 July.