I never lobbied for NOUN VC’s job – Adamu

The National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), has been in the limelight in recent times with several activities, which hitherto were not reckoned with, taking place virtually every day. The vice-chancellor, Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu, in this interview with some journalists, states his plans for the university. MARTIN PAUL was there.

How would you revolutionise NOUN to verb?
First of all, why NOUN to VERB? The idea behind NOUN is it is a name, but VERB is all about action, so it means that we are moving from a very static position to a more dynamic and active condition.
That does not mean the university was active, it has been very active and well managed by the previous administration and I want to emphasise that the former vice-chancellor managed the university very well. He was working under the circumstances he found himself and I am consolidating from there.
But, whenever you have a change of leadership, you will have people who would approach a programme from their own perspective.  I am an ICT person, I am into computer, into media and into technology. So, my focus is to create much dynamic and interactive version of NOUN and that is why I say, we are moving from NOUN to VERB, getting more active, more pro-active and in a situation, where we carry everyone on board, balance our affairs, in not only employment, but admission.
So, NOUN to VERB is a strategic plan of the current administration of the university to be more focus and dynamic and much more engagement with stakeholders, who are interested in the university.

Law graduates not admitted into Law School
Let me give you a little bit of history so that you can understand the problems. There are two distinct characteristic of the Act that created the university. Firstly, it was based on the Open University of the UK, which offered something better at that time, so they borrowed its philosophy. Number two, up till now, legally, we are not National Open University of Nigeria, we are National Open University (NOU), but if you talk to older members of the university community, they will still refer you to NOUN. We are not like the UK Open University, but we are an open university without a Nigeria, so this is the genesis of the problem.
In the Charter of the Open University of the UK, it prides itself with instructions by correspondence to students, and the target of Open University of the UK, at the time it was created, was a part time study programme. These are the two words, correspondence and part time, that have created a big problem for NOUN.

The Council for Legal Education that is under the Ministry of Justice says that as far as they are concern, they would not allow any person who studied by part time or correspondence to enter into law school. This is their charter, so the only way to get out of this situation is for us to remove correspondence and part time in our own charter, so that we can reflect an understanding of who we are and what we do and the way we deliver our programmes. That is why we have insisted that we are Open and Distance Learning (ODL) institution.
We have submitted to the Senate as amended law, while the Senate is still on that, the university decided to actually change from NOU to NOUN and so that additional ‘N’ to the name is another problem. So, because the NOU Act has not been amended, therefore as far as Council for Legal Education is concern, we are still running correspondence and part time programme.  Although we have told them severally that we are not running part time, but Open and Distance Learning, that old Act seems to suggest that we are, so until the Senate approves the amended Bill, which would remove those words, and create impression of ODL, we are still stock in the circumstance.
Another reason they think we are part time is that NOUN was created with consideration for those who are working, that is why the motto is “Work and Learn’ because those who are working without degrees cannot be allowed to have a degree from any institution except on part time basis, so that is another impression, but we are not running part time study only at weekends that is why we created study centres and right now, we have 77 study centres spread across every state in the country. In addition, a lot of communities have also created centres and this enables students go and meet facilitators, people who are able to understand the processes. They are not going to teach them as in a conventional classrooms, but if somebody did not understanding a certain thing, the facilitators would direct him or her. We also have guidance counselors, who are there to show the appropriate course one could study.
We want the CLE to pay us a visit, come to our Faculty of Law and talk to us, see the quality of what we have, and we are ready to do whatever the CLE would want us to do to ensure that our graduates are admitted into the Law School.

Similarly, NOUN graduates not enlisted for NYSC national service
Again let us go back to history. When NOUN was created, it was created for workers, people who were already employed and we were thinking at that time that in the first instance many of them were old and above 30 years, which is the bar for graduates to participate in the NYSC scheme. The biggest problem of NOUN is it success, that is the paradox that in the last five years, it has been spectacularly successful, a huge number of students are now enrolled. In one course alone I have 32, 000 students, now imagine the number trying to go for the service, they will overload the system. So, from the beginning, NOUN was for mature students, who were already working. So, we are not thinking about that, but because a number of young people who sat for JAMB twice or thrice and could not be admitted have turned to NOUN, they could be asking for NYSC.
NYSC is not saying they don’t like our students, but are saying they don’t have the capacity, but we are waiting for the National Universities Commission to write to them to clear these particular problems.
Any plan to expand highly populated study Centres?
There are some centres that have few students and we are thinking of merging them with other centres so that it could be even across the country. I think I have a list of centres and if you look at it, it is tilted southwards and not northwards. For instance in Zamfara state, we have less than 400 students, but Delta state has the highest number of active students. Where we have more students, we batched them and so far, things have been going on fine.
There are centres we have  very few students, either they are not aware, but we are going to carry our advocacy programme, but a place like Enugu, Lagos, Delta, they carry huge number of students, but Bayelsa and Ebonyi, are educational disadvantage states and when you look at it, enrolment of students is low.

Areas of amendment in the ACT
Right now we have our Act before the Senate for amendment to reflect the fact that we are ODL, which was not captured in the original Act.  Remember in the 80s, there was no internet service in Nigeria, it effectively came to Nigeria through Obafemi Awolowo University in the 90s, but even at that, it was not elaborate. It was not until year 2000 that internet service was all over the place, so the concept of ODL was alien, it is only now that the technology is everywhere and we have started talking about ODL.
It is that culture we want to capture in our academic map, that that in future, we can include virtual classrooms, virtual laboratories, virtual libraries, virtual experiment because more dynamic experiences are in virtuality, which we want to focus attention.

Some lawyers petitioned over your appointment, what is your take?
Let me put it this way, I was sitting in Bayero University conducting my own research ad minding my own business when I was appointed vice-chancellor of NOUN. That is a call to serve and I accepted it. Now, if President, Muhammadu Buhari has said go to NOUN, I have to go because of my total loyalty and obedience, not only to him, but to the rule of law. If he says, go back to where you came from, I will have to go back, at least I have done my bit.
Yes! I was taken to court, by a member of our council, to prevent me from entering the office, but he eventually withdrew the case. I was never bothered because I did not ask for this position, I did not apply for it, I did not pray or put my mind in it. I just heard my name. So, I am not worried by lawyers taking me to court, but I think it was good they did that.

What are the success stories of NOUN?
We have succeeded in making the university a community now. Everybody is feeling the sense of belonging, for instance, I discovered that NOUN was based on a school system, but it might interest you to know that when the former vice-chancellor Professor Olugbemiro Jegede assembled people to develop course, I was among them. Most of the universities operate a faculty system and we want our students to feel that they are in a university, so we converted units to department and created faculties. That is the first success story.
The second success was election, before now people were appointed to head section, the VC appoint the dean and he in turn appoints others to head the units, so there was a lot of controversies, but today we hold election to place heads of sections. I am proud to say after the elections, 60 per cent of our deans are women, there is no university in the country that has that number of female academic staff heading departments.
Another achievement is that we have stopped engaging outsiders for our course material development, in the past, we had friends who developing curse materials, the biggest is the movement to its permanent side on April 1, 2016.
Now we had a faculty in Kaduna, seven in Lagos, but faculty of health sciences, faculty of science, faculty of Arts and faculty of social sciences have moved to Abuja, living the faculty of education, management sciences and faculty of law behind.