Professor Kehinde Imisioluwa Eniola is the current and pioneer Vice Chancellor of the institution. A workaholic academia with a bogus idea of running an institution where challenges are seen as an ingredients for self discovery and opportunities for innovations. In this exclusive interview, he bring to bear his efforts to integrate technology into academic landscape and divulged his dream for the growing institution. Excerpts:
To the public, how do you want us to represent you Sir?
All right, thank you very much. I am Professor Kehinde Imisioluwa Agbaraolorun Temitope Eniola. Vice Chancellor, Kogi State University Kabba.
One year of operations, no doubt as a citadel of learning, Sir can you give an overview in terms of meeting up with goals and expectations.
May be I will start by appreciating God and the immediate past Governor of Kogi State, His Excellency, Alhaji Yahaya Adoza Bello and the incumbent Governor, Alhaji Ahmed Usman Ododo for how they have supported the vision of the University. Yes, like you are aware, we started about a year ago and it looked like it is not going to be real but with the commitment that was shown by the former Governor and the current one, the University has seriously advanced and had achieved to a large extent almost ninety percent of what we had set to achieve have been actualised.
We targeted that we are going to start the academic session, we started in January. We ended the session in September, we have resumed for the new session now in November. So within one year, we are already catching up with the idea of having a calendar that runs between October and June. The school has been well subscribed to, we have to lift our cut off marks up so that we will be able to manage the population of students that are coming because of the kind of interest that we get.
That tells you again that the school is getting known. We want to run a University that is digital in operation and that is what we have been doing. Our students, you don’t find them queuing up to do anything, we have (QR Code) where they just scan and gain access to whatever information they need to get and we also grow our solutions from within. It is a University that believes very much in the enterprise of the youths and students and that’s how we love to run our University. So far so good, it has been very wonderful and you know when fund is not scarce, it is easy to run and that is another area where I want to thank our Governor.
Of recent, there was an approval of eight billion Naira for infrastructural development of the institution. Sir what do you envisage in terms of short, medium and long term plans?
Yes, the sum is a large amount and when you see such fund coming, that tells you that there is a projection not just for the immediate but for a long term goals. The project approved are supposed to take care of students’ accommodation, take care of Science, and when you are talking about science; you are talking about the art of development. So when such a thing comes up, you know that Government is serious about what it is doing. We are also looking up to the construction of the administrative building.
The thing we visualise is that, with this kind of projects coming on board, the University is going to be the one that will be favourably competing with those in more civilised world and environment. I mean like Europe, United States. If you have seen the structures, I have seen it myself and I can just tell you for free: for example, the Senate building is modelled after a butterfly and surprisingly, few days ago, I was outside there and I saw several butterfly flying towards the direction of the site. So that tells you that, already nature is in agreement with our dreams and expectations. When you see such a thing, it can only be God that is involved.
Sir, no doubt in the start up point of a University, the issue of accreditation and other challenges always pup up. How far has the institution been able to address the situation?
Yes. At the start, there are challenges but the challenges that we have are not those that cannot be overcome. For instance, our University is the type that we look at situations, we don’t just see challenges. We see challenges as an opportunity to innovate and bring solutions up. So the challenges we have had is more of coping with subscriptions, not in the area of accreditation. For instance to start up, we needed to have the National University Commission (NUC) results verification. That was done last year and to be candid, it was just all about a year ago that the (NUC) came around, look at the resources that are available in the campus in terms of man power, in terms of physical facilities and they gave us the go ahead that we can start.
Then Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB) came in because admission can only come through JAMB. Within three days of starting, the five hundred quotas that was already given to us was already over subscripted. So we have to go back again and ask for more and we are given about one thousand seven hundred and fifty. Of course we needed to work within the limits of the facilities that we have, we just took one thousand and forty five.
This year, we are targeting to take up our full quota and that is where the structural development that Government has been doing comes into play. So we have not really had challenges with accreditation because we will be due for that in another one year and one of the good thing is that, some of our staff on ground are people who had actually participated as resource person to go out and do accreditation in other schools.
So when you are already an examiner, you will definitely know the marking scheme. So it is easy for us to start preparing right from now. We are not waiting till next year. Everything that needs to be in place, right from the start, we have been pushing and government has been supporting us to make sure that we get all those things to be in place. Therefore we don’t envisage any problems. The only problem we are having is over subscription which I think is good problem. You know in time, we will increase capacity and take in more people.
Sir, to be specific, a fortnight ago, there was an handing over of contractual agreements between the State Government and contractors for project execution. What is your charge to contractors in the aspect of specifications?
Well, when we came on board, there was a slogan that we discovered that it was popular in Kogi State. It is GYB standard! Which is all about working according to specifications and it is good that the contractors haven been handed over the deal a fortnight ago, it will interest you to know that some of them have started clearing the site already and had already doing the site layout and yesterday we had to go into field with a few of them to look into what they are doing and I was pleasantly surprised that all of them are responding.
There are three to four contractors that have moved to site already and I am sure that the fourth person, by the time that he heard that others are moving , he will definitely move. The charge is to finish the job in eight months which is like saying that before the next session commence, all of these things must be in place. It is a welcome development.
So my charge to them is that they should be faithful to the agreement, they should work within the time frame of eight months and I told them yesterday that we have eyes for details. We will go out and inspect what they are doing from time to time to ensure that they keep to the project specifications and designs.
Rating Ododo’s administration in terms of performance, what is your view particularly in the aspect of education?
I want to say that we have a Governor that I am excited about. His commitment which he has demonstrated in education shows that he really knows what education is all about and that it is also a government of continuity. I am not sure if you have seen this quote by former Governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello where he talks about “education being the foundation for a good society and proffers solutions to problems confronting humanity’.
That in itself shows that Governor Ahmed Usman Ododo understood that philosophy and has keyed into it. I can tell you authoritatively that the school fees in Kogi State Universities are about the lowest in this country. When I have the opportunity of looking through some State Universities and what they were charging, I was shocked.
Even indegene in those states paid more than what we are charging non indegene in Kogi State. So that tells you about what Government has invested in education and I want to thank his Excellency Governor Ahmed Usman Ododo and pray that God will give him long life to continue what he has been doing. I am sure that people are happy with him and if people are happy with you, that indicates that God is also happy with you. So he is doing very well and on behalf of the academic sector, I say thank you to His Excellency.
Infrastructure aspect, I mean road, state of electricity and other facilities needed for smooth operation, how is the institution faring?
Let me start from the roads, I am sure as you are coming in, you will see that the road is different now from how it used to be. Sometimes around March / April, my children were complaining that they had to be walking on mud and I told them just to be patient.
By the time they came back this week end, they are no longer walking on mud but on tarred roads. So anywhere you go, it is obvious that the University is growing and we have to thank His Excellency for ensuring that those contractors finish those jobs.
The issue of electricity, of course we have a little challenge but we trace it and it was just last week Thursday we are able to get the right contact and I am sure that within the next few days, it will be rectified. As a way of bridging the gap, if you are leaving, you will see an imposing, gigantic (laughs) generator which is procured to power our system. Digital life runs on power , so we just need power to run our system.
Admission is still ongoing and people are still registering. What are the requirements?
You see the way the admission runs, we are making it to be a little bit flexible, we understand that some people are still sceptic about the University but we don’t want to lock them out totally. At the same time, we will not because of them hold back those that have resumed. So we are doing mop up admission, the main admission has taken place. What we have left is just mop up to fill on some gaps here and there. There are some programmes that we still have vacancies for. So for such programme, we are willing to take in students.
However, there are some programmes that are already oversubscribed, that even the students in those programmes that are qualified are not accepted. So we have to leave them out. Programme like mass communications is already over subscribed, micro biology, computer science, I think business administration is over subscribed too.
This means even if you are qualified, and you did not come in the first batch, and you apply now, the only thing we can do for you is to take you into another cognate programme. Our idea of keeping the admission free is that, we don’t want indegene of Kogi state to loose out. So if you have passed , why do you wait at home.
There is an opportunity for you to come the University. So we are leaving that window open but it will not be opened forever. After sometime, once matriculation takes place, that will be the closure of admission. Meanwhile we still have some mop up admission exercise that is still going on.
