Adeleke varsity garri factory begins operation next year – VC

Vice Chancellor, Adeleke University, Ede, Osun state, Professor Dayo Alao, a journalist with the old Daily Times of Nigeria, turned academic, in this interview with Blueprint, shareds his experience and way forward for economic recession currently affecting the country.  Excerpts

How would you describe your experience as a journalist?
We have to put ourselves in the real position that God has allowed us to be. Do you believe that one negative report about the state could destroy the whole state and one good report could elevate the whole state? Unfortunately, the people we are serving do not appreciate it. This is a selfless service. It is sad when I discovered that many of your employers are not really appreciating you. Salaries are not paid and people are left uncared for.
A publisher, sometimes, said to his staff that his identity card is enough a meal ticket for him. This is insulting and repulsive, and I wish I had a way, that type of man will close down his paper in this country. We should be treated as professionals.
I studied in the United State. I was a member of the Press during a campaign. I was involved and I covered it for my own University Radio. We went round, we were honoured.
Although, there was no brown envelope, but we were honoured. When you describe yourself in the airport as a journalist in America, ground must shake, there must be respect.
But, here the moment they see you with camera, they beat you and seize your camera and nothing happens thereafter. I think it is time for us to have a rethink. The association must come up with a standard that any journalist in this country that is not well treated, we should all go on strike and we should not report anything.
If there is a total black out for one week, people will be on their lips and they will know we are professionals. So, my take is that we, as journalists, must be treated as professionals.
That is why today, you see some people, they will tear the Sun logo and say they represent The Sun Newspaper. If the Sun reporter comes, they will claim Tribune. It is too bad. We must do something. We must not be treated as second-class citizen. That is why we are members of the fourth estate of the realm and we must be so treated.
What can you say about your present work as academic?
Adeleke University is a product of a young man called Deji Adeleke who set up a foundation some years ago to really see how he could help the poor people in the society.
He had helped children who had no ambition, who had never thought that they will see the four walls of a higher institution and he had saved over 500,000 lives before he came into an idea that there is the need to establish a university and thereby set up Adeleke University.

To God be the glory, in 2011, the university was chattered by National Universities Commission (NUC). Adeleke University is one of the fastest growing universities in Nigeria. It is the only private university in the state of Osun and more importantly in the South-West that has Law and Engineering programme with four departments. We are working on having Petroleum Engineering very soon. We are starting Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmacology next year.
Adeleke University is one of the cheapest, but with high quality programmes. The school fee is only N550, 000 and you can pay four times. The proprietor is not seriously out to make money. As I am talking to you now, one third of the students in that school are on scholarship.
How do you feel getting to the top of both journalism and academia?
Yes, as the chairman of Daily Times, I think that is the climax after being a reporter, editor and so on. On the other part, after being a senior lecturer, professor and eventually becoming a vice chancellor of a university, I am much fulfilled and that is why I am challenging all journalists not to go to the grave uncelebrated.
Let me tell you this, there are about 36 to 40 professors of Mass Communication in Nigeria now, the Lord has endowed me to have made 15 professors. It is by the grace of God. When I became professor, there were just Professor Debowale and 15 others.
 The truth is that many journalists are even more qualified professionally, than some professors of Mass Communication, who has not spent a day in the news room.
Do you have a distinction between practical and academic journalist?
Many journalists in academics have never seen the doors of a newsroom in their lives apart from their one-year internship when they were undergraduate or post-graduate students. That is the only experience they have. They do not go to the field, but do their researches, do all sort of things in the institution and I can tell you, you will floor them if you bring them to write a publishable story.
In Adeleke University, we are merging the two. We employ only people who can match the cap with the gown.
What do you say of the present economic recession?
It is sad that Nigeria is in a bad state today and I want you to listen carefully. It is my own opinion. We fumbled for a very long time. From the day we got independent, we got it on a platter of gold. No blood was shed, no life was lost. So, the meaning of independent has no significant to the development of the nation.
Independence was attained in South Africa with bloodshed. In the morning, men will come out to say NO! to apartheid regime, they will be jailed or killed in thousands. In the afternoon, their wives will come out, they will be killed. In the evening, the children will come out and they will be killed. Then it came to a point, when the users of the gun felt tired and they went into negotiation. Today, we credit Nelson Mandela for what he did in the struggle.
In Nigeria, fortunately, no war was fought for independence. It was gotten on a platter of gold.
Today, if our president wants to travel, the road must be closed, everything must stand still. But, in America, immediately the president is on the street, you won’t even notice.

It has become bad in this country that we celebrate mediocrity. The local government chairman will have a siren and a set of officers following him I always ask my security officers who you are securing. Anybody that wants to kidnap me can easily kidnap me and kidnap you and you will be surprised that I will find my way out and you will be the victim. But, because it is the order of the day, someone must stand behind me while I continue talking. Why should that be? There are certain systems we need to reshape. Our orientation must change.
So, recession is caused by us. Apart from the global recession, ours could have been managed if were wise enough.
The solution now is to cut our coat, not only according to our size, but according to the level of the coat we want to sew. Flamboyant cars are everywhere in Nigeria. If a car is N26 million and our legislators are fighting that each of them must have such a car. Multiply 26 million by the number of Senators and Representatives.
If you visit your village, you will easily read hunger and poverty in their faces that anybody you give N1000 will dance round and continue to pray for you. I think we need to re-assess ourselves because that is why the poor are angry, kidnapping is thriving because the only way they could make their money is to kidnap a big man.

The only thing to do is to make sure we create employment and the solution is this. Nigeria is blessed with arable lands.  Traveling from Ibadan to Lagos, the number of palm trees you see all over the place should be enough to give us palm oil as an export produce.
Unfortunately, other nation will come and see what we have, take it to their country to develop it. Let’s go into agriculture. God has also blessed Nigeria
with good weather and hard-working people. I am happy to tell you that in the next two month, Adeleke University garri factory will be ready. We produce for internal consumption and for export. When you get to African store in Europe or America, you must surely see Adeleke Gari. I told the Permanent Secretary that our poultry will supply Osun state with enough eggs by December.
By the grace of God, next year, anybody that wants to buy cheap ram for Ileya, will come to Adeleke University. I believed that recession could be addressed and managed. In the next one year, I want to ensure that the proprietor does not bother to pay workers’ salary. If we could do that the state could doit, local government could do it and the nation could do it, then, we would get out of recession.

 

By the grace of God, next year, anybody that wants to buy cheap ram for Ileya, will come to Adeleke University