A UNIVERSITY AND ITS HORRIFIC VISITOR: THE CASE OF AMBROSE ALLI UNIVERSITY, EKPOMA BY IMOUDU PETER

When Obaseki got in the saddle in 2016 as visitor, he inherited from his predecessor, Comrade Adams Aliu Oshiomole, a flourishing public (state) university with virtually all the programs from medicine to agriculture enjoying accreditation by the National Universities Commission.(NUC). The University had in its ranks some of the best and most erudite personnel (teaching and non teaching) any state university anywhere else in the country could boast of. It was easily one of the best state universities in Nigeria and destination choice for thousands of persons seeking qualitative and affordable public university education in Nigeria.

Fast forward to 2024, almost 8years thereafter, the following are some of the devastating “legacies’ of the locust years of Obaseki as visitor to the Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma:

*  Near total defunding of the University. Whilst his predecessor subvented the institution by N270Million in addition to school fees as IGR, Obaseki dropped headlong the subvention to a measly N41Million. It is instructive to observe that every Governor as visitor to the university increased monthly subvention to the institution from what it inherited. This is in keeping with the ever increasing costs of running the school as a public university to make it constantly competitive in the comity of universities in Nigeria. Obaseki remains to date the only visitor that elected as a matter of policy, to engage the reverse gear. How can a public university genuinely run with a monthly subvention of N41Million. Is this even enough to pay the costs of providing energy let alone the salaries of staff and pension commitments not to mention other essential running costs of an ideal public university? This is the parlous state of satanic defunding of AAU in the Obaseki years!

* All the professional disciplines in the College of Medicine of the University are now bereft of NUC accreditation! From Medicine, Medical Laboratory Sciences to Nursing, the University can no longer admit students for over three years now and still counting! The woes, agony etc being experienced by students trapped in the University’s College of Medicine and its sister disciplines are all too well documented and reported to bear reiteration here. Whereas much younger state universities have built teaching hospitals to help with training and accreditation of their medical students, all appeals to the Obaseki administration to do likewise, fell on deaf and hardened ears! Denial of accreditation of many programs is the sorry pass with the university today and in the Obaseki years unlike in 2016.

* Ambrose Alli University as destination for admission seekers into pre-degree, degree and post-graduate programs was dealt a devastating blow by the ruinous Obaseki regime! Before Obaseki i.e in 2016, over 20,000 admission applicants used to jostle for places out of which about 10,000 were offered admission into various undergraduate programs in the University. Then, the JAMB threshold for admission into the least program of the university was 180 while that of many federal universities was 200. What is now the situation after Obaseki’s devastation? Even though the university now offers admission to every Tom, Dick or Harry, it only attracts a miserable 3000 (three thousand) or thereabout. Jamb admission threshold is now at its very nadir; 140 as against 180 in 2016. What a shame!

* Infrastructural deficit. There is no single structure from start to finish to Obaseki’s credit or name if you traverse the length and breadth of the university in his eight unfortunate years as Governor/Visitor. No other Governor including those with shorter spells in office has been so abysmal in the annals of Ambrose Alli University when it comes to provision of infrastructure. The institution’s administrative building he merely completed was near 80% built up by the Oshiomole administration. As a colleague correctly though derisively noted: “not a single block was moulded anywhere in AAU in eight years of Obaseki “.

*Dreadful commitment to payment of workers’ salaries/ entitlements, pensions & gratuities etc. If you put this question to any university staff or pensioner; which Governor/ visitor has been the worst in terms of payment of staff salaries and overall workers’ welfare? Ten (10) out of (10) will tell you it is Obaseki. As we speak, all categories of staff and pensioners are owed varying months of unpaid salaries and emoluments from two months to 30 months! Deductions from salaries for over 15 months have remained outstanding. Promotion arrears, responsibility allowances, gratuities of staff that retired since 2013 remain unpaid! In short, the list is simply endless!

* Governance/ Administrative policies.

Obaseki’s adherence to the extant law and best governance practices for universities worldwide remains the most bizarre and retrogressive in the institution’s history. In eight years as Governor/visitor, the longest duration the Czar permitted a proper Governing Council to function was less than twenty (20) months! For close to four years, Obaseki foisted on the University, a Special Intervention Team (SIT), the most brazen assault ever on established governance structures/ models for universities the world over. I stand to be corrected: no Governor/ visitor in the history of public university education in Nigeria has legislated and allowed such an aberration for so long in any university in Nigeria. From its wishy-washy composition to its crude and absolutist policies, it may take the university over two decades to recover from the wreckage occasioned by the administratively inept SIT. Its despotic methods included but not limited to selective payment of salaries,  reduction of salaries, introduction of toll taxes for staff and students to access the University campus, gathering of departmental  faculty dues to pay salaries, indiscriminate sack of workers without the faintest regard to extant laws and due process, compulsory and dubious  health insurance for all staff and students; execution of a dubious Biometric exercise which was simply a verification of Primary Six Certificates of staff including professors etc; persistent negative media campaign against the university; total usurpation of functions of Senate and other authorities and persons in a manner unknown to university administration anywhere in the world! The list of Obaseki’s cataclysmic destruction of the university through his SIT is infinite!

The number of staff (teaching and non-teaching) that died owing to deprivations of entitlements by the Obaseki regime is the highest in the university’s history. This is no exaggeration! For five years now, the university has not conducted any convocation ceremony! Even to cut grass and maintain the lawns in the University campus is a gargantuan challenge! The recent mass exodus of professors and experienced high calibre staff from the University and the consequential brain drain on the poor university is unparalleled in its ruination.

Staff, students, alumni and all stakeholders in the Ambrose Alli University project will NEVER FORGET the “Dark Ages “ and locust years of the Obaseki administration. It is a few weeks to the end of his tenure and a few days to the election of another Governor/visitor. The prayer on the lips of everyone concerned with the university is: may Godwin Nogheghase Obaseki never happen to our University again or any public university in Nigeria, Amen. May God grant our dear university a renaissance!

Imoudu Peter writes from Ekpoma in Edo State