Prof. Bamidele
Recently appointed Vice-Chancellor of Ekiti State University (EKSU), Prof. Samuel Oye Bamidele, will superintend over the 21st convocation ceremony of the university next week, barely six months after his appointment. In this interview with ODUNAYO OGUNMOLA, the senior pastor of Deeper Life Bible Church speaks about his experience on the VC’s seat so far, his vision, his achievements, and how, as a lecturer, he managed to overcome temptations from the opposite sex.
How has the experience been for the six months you have been in the saddle as Vice-Chancellor?
I want to thank God for the experience and the great challenges. And in the midst of the great challenges, I want to say that it is a sort of experience that I was able to go through with the help of God and His grace. All through the time when I resumed and till now, my experience has had a positive impact on the university community.
Recently, the West African Students Union (WASU) gave you an award, the Kwame Nkrumah Award for Excellence in Academia and Administration. How did you feel about the award which came less than a year after you assumed office?
I want to say very categorically that I am averse to taking awards, and that was the first award that I would take since I became Vice-Chancellor. It is good to say that many people and bodies contacted me with letters, saying they wanted to give me awards, but I said no. I told them that they should let me settle down first, measure my performance before giving me awards. But when these people came with suggestions, I said that I was going to reject it until I was educated that this one was a credible international award and I accepted. Then they came, and when I saw the pedigree of those who came, about 16 of them. They were introducing themselves, one said I am from Ghana, another said I am from Côte d’ Ivoire. I saw all of them coming virtually from all the West African countries. Therefore, I accepted this award. To say the least, I was particularly elated that I have this privilege of being recognised to be given this award.
On the other side of the question, the challenge I have taken is that I will continue to increase my tempo and my passion for the students because it is historical and strategic that the first award I would receive as the Vice-Chancellor of this university came from international students. They said many things I didn’t know they were ever aware of, because since I came on board, I have been fighting a great crusade on behalf of the students. I believe that this starts from parents. We are here, the biological parents have committed the lives of these students into our hands and my own simple analogy is that we should be the closest parents to them while they are in school.
I was not fighting my colleagues. It was just like a battle to say let’s change our mindset; let’s know that when parents gave these children to us, the intention was that we should let them get out of this university as better materials than they came in. It is like a factory; you put the raw materials into the system and you want to get a very good product. That has been my crusade in this university.
Shortly after you assumed office, you held revenue and academic summits. Have these policies had positive impact on the university since you concluded them?
I came into this university with a vision. In fact, in my application, I said brighter vision, bigger mission. I came here as a Vice-Chancellor with a brighter vision because I am an insider and I have taken time to critically examine the condition of our university and I felt that I should be able to understand this place more than an external candidate. I came with a vision. I knew that in this present situation in our state, in our country, except one wants to deceive himself or herself, there is no higher institution, no university that can say it would rely on the government to fund its educational activities. Therefore, I came with a vision for IGR (internally generated revenue). I also came with a vision for academic quality, because it is not enough to have money as an institution without an equal effort at improving quality.
So we had two summits. We had the academic summit and then we had the IGR summit. I am happy to say here very clearly today that these two summits are bringing positive dividends to our university. The IGR summit has radically changed the face of our university. As you are entering the university, we have a building by the right. That is our water project. I am not rushing it because we are being strategic. I could have as well restructured one of the old buildings, but I said no. We want to make it international, and when we have the water, it will be one of the best in this country.
If you get through our roadside, you will see that our bakery is growing. The building is under construction. We didn’t have a bookshop before we came on board. The shelves of the bookshop are being installed now. Our block industry before I came was comatose. It was leased to an external consultant, but I said this is a university and we are talking about IGR. It is already our own and we have tons of blocks now. Any building that is erected on the soil of this university must use blocks produced from here. We are reviving our press. Because the university is an academic environment, we have publications, journals, exam booklets. How can we rely on printers outside alone? So, these are some of the good things that came from the IGR summit.
Let me also mention that we have what we call the university auto care. That will be a masterpiece by time we complete it. Other universities will come here, by the grace of God, to look at it. In the auto care, we are going to have a quadrangle. We will have a petrol station, a service bay, a car wash, a theatre. We are going to have our own inverter, batteries and distilled water. Some of the things we go outside to buy, there is a particular sector that is working on that under the leadership of Prof. Akintayo, who is a chemist. So work is going on that particular area.
If I have my way, I would tell them to go and harvest some of our mushrooms for you and you give to your wife to cook for you. So, a lot of things are happening with this IGR. I want to believe that it is a confirmation of my vision which came through the channel of this IGR summit. So, academic summit was out to bring quality to our academic enterprise in this university. This we are already achieving.
I said it in the last Senate that I have just spent six months and I have started the second six months. This second six months, I am focusing on academic quality and discipline in the university. This is where I want to showcase again the products of the academic summit that we had, which would impact on students. It would impact on the staff and it would impact on the entire academic community. I want to say that the two summits have been fantastically productive.
Staff and students welfare is key to the output of staff and students. What is your agenda for their welfare?
In fact, if you ask any question from either the students or staff of this university, the quick answer you are likely to get is that the VC is a welfarist vice-chancellor. My passion is to see to the welfare of staff and students of this university. I want to say that if somebody comes to the helm of affairs and does not put the welfare of staff and students first, what is he or her coming there to do? Since when I came, there has been no strike because they know that I pursue the welfare of members and unions. If you are an ASUU chairman or NASU chairman, we are to pursue the welfare of staff and students. Some think I am pampering them, but it is because I also believe that I am a parent, even a grandparent to them; that I am here to passionately take care of them and pursue their welfare just like that of the staff.
I have been pleading with my staff members that, please give them quality attention and let them pass. I am not saying that they should mortgage standards, but give them quality attention and let them come out good. Don’t cut your lecture. Don’t organise a single lecture and then you do exam, because these students will fail. If you reel out failures to the society, we are reeling out expert armed robbers, expert miscreants, and I don’t want that. I want my university to reel out products that will impact positively on our society.
A university cannot survive in isolation. How do you intend to explore partnerships and exchanges with universities all over the world in order to take EKSU to a higher pedestal?
We are working seriously in that regard. My little experience before I came into this university, we are already trying to re-engineer partnerships with foreign universities. I just came from the meeting of the Association of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities which we attended in Jos, and one of our major agenda was this area of realistic collaboration. We were told in that particular place that most of what is called collaboration in Nigerian universities is just jamboree and opportunity to travel out of the country. But that is not what is going to help our universities. I have asked for a list of all foreign universities collaborating with us and they are about 10. My plan is to just zero in on two for now. By July, God helping me and God willing, I want to travel out and visit two of the major universities we are collaborating with and these are the University of Nottingham in the UK and I want to visit the University of Houston in Texas (USA). I intend to go there, study their programmes, look at the areas of collaboration.
We are not going to look at everything together; we are just going to pick one. Initially, we had a collaboration with the University of Nottingham on engineering, I want to see how we can revive that one, then our Engineering students and staff will be going there and they will be coming here. That of Houston may not be engineering; it will be in another direction. It can be on entrepreneurship and we can also collaborate. If it can be Houston on entrepreneurship, I will do it critically, I will go deep. That is the part of the vision and inspiration I got from this meeting of the Association of Vice Chancellors of the Nigerian Universities, and that we are going to accomplish from mid-July to early August. The intention is for us to have a symbiotic relationship with the local universities and the international world so that we can be really international.
You are a pastor and at the same time an academic. How do you cope with the challenges of both callings?
I want to put it to you today that every human being is also a spiritual being. And that is the mistake many people make. There is no single person that stands and just says I am for the physical. That is pretence. Even those who don’t pray, those who don’t believe those things, they still pursue other spiritual things either when they run into problems or when they have some needs.
I want to say that God has helped me to balance the two. The problem of people in the world is that they cannot find the balance. I am an academic person and I have been a pastor for more than 30 years. I am a senior pastor in Deeper Life Bible Church, and that has never affected my academic life. My academic life can never affect my spiritual life, if you meet me in the office, you can never tell that this one is a pastor because I don’t believe in bringing or importing pastor things into academic matters. Also, if you see me in the church, you will think that I am a full-time pastor because I am there to do pastoral work. If human beings can balance and know that as we are in the physical and so also we are in spiritual realm and both must be balanced. I want to thank God that He has made me to balance the two, and that’s why I have not been found wanting at both ends.
In the course of your career as an academic in this university or elsewhere, have you ever been tempted by female students?
I want to say that every human being is tempted at one point or the other. And maybe I should say it today, the power of being a Christian is that God will give you the ability, the unusual supernatural power to be able to overcome temptation without falling into it. There is a difference between temptation and falling into temptation. For example, we are all men here and that makes it good. Supposing a woman is here now, the atmosphere will not be the same. I will not say I have not been tempted in the sense that maybe an amorous person comes in, wanting to show a quarter of her breast. I will say, ‘Excuse me, go out and dress properly. As a lecturer, you can’t come into my office like that.’
Some students will come with the intention to tempt you, trying to make eye contacts, and I will say, what are you trying to do? For you to be able to overcome temptation, you must resist it. But some people don’t resist the picture of temptation, so they run into it. So, to respond to your question directly, I want to say that to God be the glory, since I gave my life to Christ, I have not been tempted to the extent of falling, touching another person’s wife or student; never, never. And it is not only girls or women that cause temptation; some are tempted with money.
They supervise students and collect money on projects. I supervise Ph.D students and I don’t take anything from them. You cannot even try me. So, all those ones, if you can keep yourself from being attracted by women or by money or material things of this world and you are contented, it will be easy for you to overcome temptation. But summarily, every human being will face temptation at one point or the other, but the power to overcome that temptation can only come from Christ.
What measures has your administration put in place to prevent cases of sexual harassment of female students by their male lecturers?
We are going to work on that. I have said I am committing my first year to IGR and this other one is academic and discipline. We are trying to put some things in place that will checkmate some lecturers that cannot keep their libido, and to that extent, we are going to go through management and then the Senate to fashion out some strategies to protect our female students from sexual harassment. That one is being planned, I may not feel out everything now.
Things are changing in this university and that is the truth. The head matters. If there is seriousness at the top, everybody will fall in line. They know that if I catch you sexually harassing female students, you will be in trouble. If as the vice-chancellor I am also one of those carrying girls and ladies around, I won’t have the mouth to tell those who are doing it to stop or sanction them in line with the rules.
Now, it is no longer going to be business as usual. Some regulations will come out in a short while to checkmate all those things in terms of the dressing of the students, because students also can be harassers. Female students can harass male students by their amorous outlook. We want to checkmate those things and for the staff, admin, teaching and non-teaching, we are going to have some codes that will create a level of restriction as to how they can harass female students.
The university is having its 21st Convocation next week. What will you be showcasing to the world through the event?
I am happy to tell you that this year’s convocation will be a celebration of excellence; a celebration of emancipation for a university that has come of age. We are now on the path of making ourselves known nationally and internationally, that this is a university that is growing into prominence. One, we want to showcase our students. Our students in this university are excellent, and that is the truth. They are very excellent.
Recently, we had a literary competition and my university came first in the entire South West. We have a lot of talents in our university. We have some of them who are making waves in their disciplines. We want to showcase them. Apart from this, we want to showcase our current developmental innovations. Our ICT platform has moved to the next level and we want to have some of our eminent members of the society honoured by recognising and celebrating them. We are giving honorary doctoral degrees to two eminent personalities in this country. The Governor of Bayelsa State (Seriake Dickson), we want to give him a honorary award. Then our own here, Gbenga Oyebode, who has made it in the business world, in the corporate world and in the legal world, we want to showcase and celebrate him.
So, this year’s convocation will be a celebration that is unique; a celebration to which we are inviting our alumni. They are also going to be part of it. We want to celebrate excellence. We want to celebrate the Fountain of Knowledge that has become the pride of education. It will be a weeklong programme featuring a press conference, convocation environmental sanitation, convocation lecture to be delivered by no other person than the indefatigable pillar of law, pillar of education, legal luminary who is recognised beyond the shores of Nigeria, a business mogul, that is Aare Afe Babalola.
All this will precede the award of diplomas, first degrees and postgraduate degrees. It promises to be historic in all respect.
