Monday, May 9, 2011

How I managed to confront gun-wielding young men with bare hands—Veritas varsity VC

Prof. David Iyornongu Ker is one of the few academics who have served as a vice chancellor in more than one university. In this interview with EmmaNUEL Uja he speaks about his vision for Veritas University where he assumed duties in December 2010, the unique qualities of the institution, his challenges as well as his success strategy. Excerpts:
You are one of the few vice chancellors to have served in two different institutions, first at the Benue State University and now at Veritas University. How was this possible?



  
I guess that if you do the job well once, there are chances that you would be asked to do it the second time. So, one is particularly privileged to be asked to run a university again after the first outing at the Benue State University.
What it means is that my records must have attracted the attention of my employers. Unlike the BSU job, I didn't actually apply for this one. My employers came to search me out. I consider it a very special privilege. I also feel a measure of fulfillment, because it means that I must have done a good job in my first outing.
Why is your university called Veritas University and why did it take off in Obehie?

Veritas means truth. We are in search of truth. This is a university owned by the Catholic Church. It is owned by the Bishops Conference of Nigeria. The motto is Search for Truth. In addition to the things that are expected of a university worldwide, we are expected to show the light as people who search for and speak the truth. It is here in Obehie because Obehie is the take-off site. When the National Universities Commission (NUC) granted the licence to the Catholic Bishops Conference to start a university, they approved this site as a take-off site on the condition that after three years, we would move to our permanent site in Bwari, Abuja. We're here by the approval of the NUC. But we also know that our stay here is temporary. We will soon move to the permanent site. In fact, we are expected to do our final year in Abuja.
What is the vision of the founders of Veritas University and the vision you hope to pursue during your tenure?

Their vision is to create an institution that will have a Catholic tradition; a tradition based on the values of the search for truth, integrity, discipline; all this are part and parcel of what is expected of us. I'm determined to fulfill their vision. In the next five years, it is obvious that at the rate we are going, the Nigerian educational system will reckon with Veritas University.
When I arrived here, I told them that I intended to place Veritas among the top ten universities in the country at the end of my tenure, and I mean it very seriously. We have everything on the ground to make that possible. I can say without any fear of contradiction that in ICT, for instance, we are ahead of most institutions in this country now. All our students and staff can virtually, if you like, talk to each other e-wise, and that is a great thing for an institution. At the moment, we are working on the temporary site.
First and foremost, because we have just reached 300 level, we must expect a visit from the NUC. My immediate plan now is to ensure that when the NUC visits us, all the nine programmes that are due for accreditation will get full accreditation. When we get this accreditation accomplished, we will move
to the permanent site in Abuja.
At the permanent site, we have a lot of development potential. We want to engage in the community in which we are located. We want to have massive agricultural linkages with what we do and what the community does. There is a lot that is happening in that community that if we enter into intensive agriculture, livestock development, farming, whatever, we would have helped the Abuja community.
So, our College of Agriculture, which will be opened as soon as we move there, will definitely aim at showcasing what we have to show; that a new university worth its name has arrived in the town. But there are so many other colleges in the offing in addition to agriculture. Of course, there is also Veterinary
Medicine, but these are things that will happen in the second phase.
In this phase, we want to ensure full accreditation for all the basic science courses and the humanities programmes we have started. As
soon as we get there, we will go full steam.
What have you found to be the similarities and differences between running a state-owned university and a privately owned one?

The one that comes to mind immediately as one who has been in this system for a long time is the issue of numbers. It is much easier to control the numbers in a private institution. First and foremost, whereas in a public institution you go out literarily begging the NUC to increase your carrying capacity, if the NUC says 3, 160 for instance, BSU sometimes ends up with about 5, 000 and yet there are still people waiting. Here, our carrying capacity is 500 per session. Mind you, we have not be able to fill that yet. The pressure that a Vice Chancellor in a public university experiences during admissions is minimised. Other things like funding are similar in the sense that you can never really get enough money. The Catholic Bishops Conference too has done a good deal of work to ensure that the funds they require to get this thing going are made available. But what is available to them may not be quite the same as what comes from the Federation Account into the purse of the Federal Government and states.
So, obviously, there is that gap. But I must say that for me as a management leader, so to speak, I have found that it is easier for me to do this work than to do the one that was in Makurdi. This is because the demands, as I said, are much less. If you run a state university, for instance, because it is in your home town, so to speak, you seem to be connected with one person or the other. So, it is very difficult to say no. And they tend to also come as qualified students. The decision to take 2, 100 and throw away about 18, 000 is not a funny one. So, I think that I feel a bit more relieved now that I don't have the kind of pressure I used to have when I was the Vice Chancellor of the Benue State University. Even if it is just the burden of admission requests alone, I think I'm a happier person.
One of the marked differences is in the regime of fees. Can you compare or justify the kind of fees paid at the Benue State University, for instance, with that of Veritas University?

Well, education is a service. But over time, it has become obvious to various governments that education is not something that government can do alone. When you now give private people and bodies an opportunity to run a university, it must have a way of sustaining itself. So, you must charge economic fees. You must charge fees that will at least enable you to take care of some of the operational costs of the university. That is why the fees are much higher than they are in the public system. In the public system, of course, the government picks the bill for salaries, capital development and almost everything. It hardly goes to the institution to ask what you have done with your internally generated revenue. Here, our proprietors expect us to be able to generate sufficient funds not just from fees and other charges alone, but to be able to have a university that can sustain itself.
Now, you were talking about vision not too long ago. That is also my own vision. By the time I leave here, I don't want a situation where each time a quarter is about to start, I go cap in hand to the Bishops for funding. We should be able to explore ways of getting the kind of funds we need to run this institution without going back to the proprietor. I think that is also part of my vision. It is not easy, but you have to keep looking for innovative ways of generating funds. If for instance, we are leading the way in ICT, there must be a way we can generate funds from what we are able to give to people.
As it is now, it seems you are not running any course in ICT; you are just using it. Do you have any plans to run a course in ICT so that you can deploy it too as a revenue generation tool?

Definitely, Computer Science/Mathematics is on the cards. It is just that we don't really have the manpower and even the students to start now, especially Mathematics. But definitely in the forthcoming session or let's say in the next two sessions, we will be able to run courses in Computer Science.
How much does a student pay per session at Veritas, including accommodation and all other things?

Three hundred and fifty thousand naira (N350, 000).
Do you have any plans to increase this?

Not immediately. But we can't rule it out. When we move to
Abuja, we are going to be more heavily involved in capital-intensive things. We may need to make the parents bear some of the expenses. But I am not going to make a pronouncement on that. After all, come to think of it, it is not even within my authority to talk about increasing fees.
What are the special challenges you face at the temporary site at the moment?

Security is one of them. The incidents that occurred between July and December last year were very, very threatening, even to the life of this institution. My predecessor was kidnapped. Our Bursar was kidnapped. Three students were kidnapped, and even the registrar was actually attacked and, to some extent, whisked away for quite some time. So, that is our major worry in this temporary site. Otherwise, as you can see, it is a serene environment. This campus is one of the most beautiful campuses that you can think of in this country. It is neat. It is serene and it is manageable because it is not too big.
So, we are okay even for infrastructure, classrooms and so on. But we have a problem with security. Because we have a problem with security, we also have a problem with accommodation. For students, we insist that all students should be in the hostel. But we don't have staff quarters, and because the security situation is not good enough, some people are simply scared. They wouldn't want to think of residing in a place where they may be whisked away at night or even during the day. So, that is really our main challenge here now.
Is this why you plan to move to Abuja within the year?

No, no, no. As I explained earlier, the licence to stay in Obehie expires this year. The NUC allowed us to run this university on this take-off site for three years and we began in 2008. So, we are due to leave. By the licence that we were given, the conditions were that we must take off at our permanent site in our fourth year. So it is not because of insecurity that we are going; it is because we are compelled by the laws binding the establishment of universities to stay where
the licence was approved for us, which is Abuja.
You talk about the security situation, yet you are so confident going about your duties here. Are you not scared that one day it could be your turn?

Well, I'm human. But because I'm human, I also know that it is God who made me. And I know that because He made me, He has a destiny for me, and if He so wishes that that's the way my life should go, I don't think I have much to do about it. But I came here with the fear of God in mind. I came here as a courageous citizen of this country who owes a responsibility to people who have confidence in what I can do. I owe them a duty. I was trained by the Catholic Church right from primary school to secondary school and higher school. If the Bishops of the Catholic Church come to me and say David, come and run a university for us, it doesn't seem to me to sound right to tell them that well, I don't think the security situation is right for me. So, I accepted the challenge because I believe that it is something that God wants me to do. But there is nothing I can do if my destiny is to fall in the hands of criminals. I pray not, and I'm sure that the bishops, yourself and everybody prays for me so that I can do this job to the best of my ability as I always try to do, and walk away in one piece.
At the Benue State University, we remember that you called the bluff of cultists and other criminals yet nothing happened to you. Does your confidence stem from this belief?

First and foremost, yes. God is always the one that leads me, and I don't want to boast about it. I know that if it wasn't for Him, there is no way I would have been able to confront young men who were carrying guns with bare hands. But He allowed me to do it and I did it very well. And come to think of it, even the ones I expelled still treat me with a lot of respect. So, I have faith in the God that made me, and I think that the courage he gave me to run that institution for a little over five years is the same courage that is allowing me to work here.
There must be something your university offers which we can't find anywhere else. What unique thing do you intend to bring into the university?

Every institution has a tradition, and even though we say we talk about excellence, we talk about integrity, we talk about truth and a lot of these things, it is how you go about trying to accomplish these ideas that makes you different. And I believe that working for an institution that is 2000 plus years old, I already have a tradition, a strong tradition behind me: the Catholic tradition. That is the tradition that brands itself in my consciousness, and that tradition is what I believe has made me who I am. And it is my job to ensure that I make sure I translate this long 2000-year-old tradition into reality, so that what I'm doing would be different from what other people are doing.
Mind you, a university is a university in the sense that the ideals of teaching, research and community service are all there. What is it about you that is going to make you stand out? And that is the belief in the people that I'm working for that I'm talking about. I know they expect me to be better than others. If there are other faith-based universities in Nigeria, they want me to be number one. If there are faith-based universities and public universities, they want me also to be number one, because the Catholic Church is number one and in anything we try our hands on, we try to excel.
For instance, this is one university where we have 24-hour electricity supply. How did we do it? We have used solar energy very effectively. So, we use solar. We use NEPA. We use our generator. So, throughout the day, if you come to this campus, you won't have a problem charging your instruments. You won't have a problem accessing any information because we are constantly linked to power. Isn't that unique? Where I came from, sometimes they could say maybe they've stolen the battery of the generator or something. But here, even if the battery is stolen, there is a backup. So, I'm already finding ways of showing people that things can be done differently.
But more essentially, it is the human capital that develops an institution, and I'm in the business of recruiting the best brains I can for this university. I believe that when I do that, the thing they will be able to produce will shine. I have already started doing that. There are not many professors of Accounting in our country. In three months, I have poached one and brought him here already. So, I think there are several ways. As we begin to settle down at the permanent site to exercise point by point the vision that we have for this great Catholic institution, we will arrive where we want to be.
Some think that a Catholic university would be similar to a seminary.
Is it so here?

It is not. A seminary, as you know, is an institution whose sole purpose is to train priests. In the end, they do get degrees, but the degree is not the main product because they are being trained as missionaries. Here, we are running a comprehensive universal university in the sense that we are doing what all universities do. We are offering degree programmes in as many disciplines as we can. Let me just give you a simple example: if it was a seminary,it had to be headed by a priest. But the proprietors recognised that this is not a seminary, so they did me the favour to run the university. There is a lot of difference between a university and a seminary.
I spoke with a student and he told me that they have to take permission to go off campus and to come back. I found it strange that a university student would take permission to go out and come in. Do you operate like this?

We do.
Why?

First of all, for security. In spite of that, three of them were still kidnapped. So, it is obviously for the sake of discipline and for security. We want to be able to account for each of our students. Their parents have put them in our care and we should not just fold our hands and wait until there's a disaster. So, we insist that if they are going out, at least the Dean of Students Affairs should give them approval.
Let's look at your person. In 1968, you were one of the four who excelled in their West African School Certificate examination in your school, Mt. St. Michael's Aliade. In 1974, you were one of the best in your graduating class at the Ahmadu Bello University such that you were offered so many employment opportunities.
In 2004, you became the best Vice Chancellor of state-owned universities in the country. Do you have a strategy for this streak of firsts?

I usually tell myself it can't be a strategy. What I always tell people is that I am a very lucky guy. I think I'm lucky but I have a very quiet competitive style. I always want to be there where the best
are. Right from my secondary school days, if you were brighter than me, you must be my friend. I want to be like you and if possible do better than you. So, I usually ended up with them, so to speak. I have no time for gossip. I must belong to where the best are going. Fortunately, I always believe that is where I belong.
I also turn to be the best among them. But my mind is always competing. I don't compete in any aggressive or negative way. If you are better than me, I will respect you. I also try to respect people for what they do. I respect you as a well grounded journalist. I can't take that from you. I think that gives me the peace of mind to also excel in what I'm doing. I don't begrudge anybody of their own attainments. Rather, I keep looking for an opportunity to emulate them. What I've always done is to check. At St. Michaels, we were very lucky. As soon as you got to school, that was in 1964, the results of people who graduated immediately before we came were displayed on the notice board. So, I remember that as a kid, you would go there and say this guy, Jacob Tilley Gyado, had five distinctions. Ambrose Feese had five… We looked at these things and I kept saying why can't I get those five distinctions myself? What is it that makes it possible for these people to get these five distinctions? So, there must be some role modeling. And then you look at school magazines. It is amazing that now, my boss, so to speak, the Arch Bishop of Abuja, he is the chairman of
the governing council. He also went to the same school as I did and he was the best ever. We used to hear stories about him; how he had distinction in every subject; how he was an all rounder. And then we read some of his stuff in school magazines. As kids, we wanted to either get close to him or beat him. We talked about it among ourselves.
So, if you mentioned these four who, if you like, were the best in the graduating class of 1968, Professor Uvah, for instance; Dr. Salawu who is a consultant at the National Hospital; and Chris Ikyaator who resigned recently as a Director in the state ministry. We always talked among ourselves and said we had to try and do better than these people. So, you must have something to look forward to. That is my view.
When I became a VC, everywhere they were going, I always wanted to go: meetings, seminars, whatever. And I compared notes. I tell them
what I am doing, they tell me what they are doing. If I noticed that somebody is doing something which is unique and is producing results, I do it and vice versa. I remember very well the VC of Ebonyi State University then. He said where did you get money to build those structures? I said I pleaded with the chairmen of local governments and they gave me money. He sent people again to come and have a look. He went back to his government and got ALGON to give him money to build projects. He actually invited me to come for the commissioning. So, you learn from your peers, as long as you don't look at it as something that is making you green with envy, you learn a lot. And I think that's why I've come out.




To summarise it, I'm lucky. I think God has been really kind to me. As I keep telling people, if I tell you the school where I started my primary school, you will be surprised. It was RCM Agagbe. Up till now. 50 years plus, there is no road to that place. So, if somebody can come from that kind of background and be such a well known scholar, then it can't be his own work. It must be God that is doing it. He is giving you special favour, and you have taken advantage of the favours He has given you to make you rise from, if you like, that hinterland to where you have become well known around the world.