‘My greatest disappointment in academia was the tribalism’

For 43 years, Prof. Ikenna Onyido traversed ivory towers across Nigeria, contributing his quota to varsity education and development. The former Vice-chancellor of Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State, however, expressed his disappointment at a pervading culture of tribalism, and corruption. He spoke to Nwanosike Onu.

Congratulations on your retirement from the academia. How fulfilled are you?

What makes people fulfilled varies from one person to another. But when I look at some of my products, those who have passed through me, I find out that the views they expressed, the philosophy they espoused, the positions they take on issues are close to mine, if not exactly mine. Then I know I have passed something from my generation to another.

That’s one level of fulfilment. Another level is, you see your students doing well in their chosen careers, especially when they are not doing things the common way, as in cutting corners, jumping queues; people who believe that hardwork pays. When I look at those products, I’m quite satisfied.

So, I’m fulfilled when I find that I’ve passed on to receptive minds what I also received from the generations before me.

Your valedictory lecture initially was titled, “That Our Leaning Ivory Towers do not fail”, but you later changed it to “The Antithesis of a rolling stone that gathers moss.” What informed change?

There is this supervisor whom I worked with before getting my Ph.D. He thought me that if you have any ideas, share it with your peers, and see their reactions to it.

He also said, do not fear that your ideas will be stolen; it is only fickle ideas that are stolen like that (laughs). That advice played out very well for me because as a career scientist, I never presented papers that I’d published. But when I was growing up as a middle-career scientist, I used to go with my unpublished data. And when I go on to present it to a big scientific conference; you will be surprised what comes out of it. By the time you get buffeted left and right with questions and people ask if you’ve considered alternative interpretations to what you have, you get a more balanced outcome.

When I was going to Ibadan last year, I was already putting pen to paper to write this valedictory lecture, but when it was postponed, I stopped. I don’t like giving stale lectures. I literally go from my writing table to a meeting or conference. If it’s stale, there’s a way it drags on me. So, as soon as it was postponed, after I’d done what seemed to be an intro, I told a colleague, look at my dilemma. Initially I taught I should give my lecture a title as “That our learning Ivory Towers do not fail”, but earlier I thought of telling a story of how I moved from one university to the other under the caption, “The antithesis of a rolling stone that gathers moss.” They asked me how the topic came up, I told them the story…

UNIZIK was the 5th university I’ve worked. I was a full time staff in a career of 43years and I’ve been going from one institution to another, mostly on invitations. When I settled in UNIZIK, a friend of mine asked me to return to Makurdi, an institution I was a confirmed staff before going to Umudike, but I said no, that I was gradually settling in UNIZIK.

Then he laughed, saying, ‘Prof, it looks like you a rolling stone.’ I replied with laughter, saying I’m indeed a rolling stone that antithetically gather moss. Immediately I shared this story, they all echoed, ‘Let that be the title.’

Would you say the Nigerian academia has progressed or retrogressed in the last 43 years?

It’s a valued statement that I’ll answer consciously. Yes, systematically. As a system, it has regressed. But giving alternatives and better circumstances, there are individuals who would have done better than they’ve done. We’ve become more like the society that set us up. The reason universities are set up is not just teaching and learning and producing manpower. It is about generating ideas that lead the society. In fact there are some ideas you generated that might not be understood by the society that you are trying to lead. You have to lead them to understand, which means you have to have a higher moral ground.

Unfortunately, all the vices that are in the larger society are domesticated in the university system – corruption, indiscipline, lack of responsibility, shortcuts, using public platforms for personal gains, name them.

The university is constructed in a way that our genetic makeup which is our academic culture & tradition, has an interface between us and the society. That interface allows for a two-way exchange – that the ideas, knowledge, innovations, manpower that you train are useful to the society; it also allows for the challenges of the society to flow into the university for proper articulation, study and recommendation of solutions. Those challenges could be technical, societal or what scientists could manage. It could also be health problems.

Our medical faculties are supposed to rush to that place to collect samples. Ask its history, come back and do the experiments and put together a treatment regime that could respond to that. So you see the two way thing?

As VC of Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, you presented two books, one of which is: ‘A Testimony for Academic Leadership.’ What are the special challenges of university administration and leadership in Nigeria and how can they be surmounted?

Actually, the job of a VC in this country is one of the most difficult if it’s done the way it should be done. I like conceptualising issues before talking about the ideal and non ideal. A university community is a global system. So if I call myself a VC, I should be able to compare my behaviour – response and output, with that of my counterpart in Oxford University.

That’s why you see Harvard fight to regain the top position if they ever drop from the first, second or third position. That’s one thing many of us who were or are VCs never considered. We then drag a position that has been defined by academic culture and tradition, where it has been defined and conceptualised, to the Nigerian system. Apart from the physical problems, the security is on your head as the Chief Security Officer. When I was the VC, the walkie-talkie that links me with other security points is always awake at night. Kidnappers or thieves are operating somewhere at night, it will report. Even in South Africa and India, their security architecture is managed like a police unit. In fact, they’re part of the municipal police, but specifically trained to manage the university campus. But here, the VC is the CSO. You’re the person managing all the waste on your campus. When I assumed office in Umudike, one of the first problems I had was that previous administrations buried human wastes and all kinds of wastes generated, including chemical wastes. So they buried it somewhere susceptible to leaking, and when the next rain came, it washed everything off down to the stream and poisoned the stream that fed a community.

So, as VC, you are the Chief Security Officer and Chief Waste Management Officer; you are the electricity generator for your campus. In Umudike, 95% of the power used for the five years I worked, was generated by the varsity. All the water was generated internally.

When we went for a conference of Common Wealth VCs in India, we went into focus groups. VCs from other African countries that Nigerian’s GDP was more than 100 times of theirs didn’t have these problems. So if you have all these on your head, when will you have time to devote to strategic thinking on how to move your university forward to solve the societal problems which is primarily the reason for our existence?

However, I find it exciting in the sense that it enabled me take the university in the direction I thought a university should go. It also enabled me demonstrate that certain things could be done.

But l was also looking forward to going back to classroom. I preferred my life as a teacher, a groomer of young minds around; to solving the problems I didn’t create (laughs). Then I had to read files, petitions, all kinds of things land on my table. Maybe two staff are quarrelling, a quarrel that might have started from their village, extends here, very depressing.

However, I am happy and thankful that I was given the opportunity because like I said during my valedictory lecture, the greatest external crowd I had was those from Umudike. From the feed backs I’m getting, there are those who confessed that I planted seeds in them that are beginning to germinate and bear fruits.

Initially it was difficult, as there were groups that tried to form around me, like Anambra indigenes in the university community inviting me for a party but I objected. Though I didn’t put it like Mr. President’s, “I belong to everybody, but belong to nobody”, but that was what I did. In summary, the job of a VC is very challenging, that is if it should be done the way it should be done.

If the job of a VC is so challenging, how is it that people are always jostling for it?

In the golden age of the mid 80s, before IBB introduced the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) and our money was devalued, values were high. Then there could only be two, three persons interested in the position of the VC race and they were usually from the crop of distinguished professors. In fact, people chose their preferences. There were people who never become HoDs, Deans of faculties. Call them, we want to make you Dean, they said no, that it could interfere with their research. That was before. Now, traditional rulers go to VCs lobbying for their children to be HoDs. When the military later understood that there were those of us so hungry and eager for power, it became who knew who. A federal university is now created where 2-year old professor without integrity is made a VC. People then saw that one could make money by becoming a VC. They saw that if they’re given N300m for capital projects, even if it was mere 10% commission they got back, in a year, they had N30m in their bank account.

We had people whose lifestyles got transformed overnight because they became VC; so it became the apple they were chasing, not the real thing of providing quality service as a leader of academic. However, I must not in anyway, impugn the integrity of all the VCs. There are many that have done well. There are those who want to do the right thing, but are swimming against the current because the pressure on them to do it the way of others was high.

Do you have any regrets in your 43years sojourn in the academic world?

Regrets? I won’t call them regrets, rather disappointments. I don’t think there was any action that I took that I regretted. I may not have gone that far, but I met certain shocks that I call disappointment. At the end of the civil war, I went to Ibadan while some of my colleagues went to UNN. Actually my dad insisted I went to Ibadan. As a student, I didn’t forget the causes and hardship of the war. But at least, I became a functional Nigerian and was received and reintegrated into Nigeria. By the time I finished, I was bought by the idea that the university system knows no nationality or ethnicity because it is one system which is organically connected. I believed then that since I was serving a system and not just a particular institution, I should give my best.

When I was called out to Markudi, we worked ourselves virtually to death trying to establish a varsity. Then I became a DVC, where you’ll leave your house around 8am not knowing when you’ll come back. I hail from Okija but Markurdi become my home. But when the issue of becoming a VC came up, the hostility I saw and experienced, together with my family and some other people around me were unprecedented. I had eight court cases to keep my job. Eventually, when a native VC was appointed, he wanted us thrown out of the place.

I think that was my greatest disappointment in the Nigerian system. People told it to your face that you don’t belong to this place, go home there is a federal university in your place.

Well, you could say those were Tiv people. But what happened when I was appointed VC of University of Agriculture, Umudike. Didn’t the Abia State House of Assembly pass a motion rejecting the appointment? They insisted I must not come there, that there is Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Awka. At the state varsity, the challenge is which  local government are you coming from?

Those were my greatest disappointments. The university system thought me that we have not started nation building and that there are lots of pretences in what we are doing. The issues of fault lines and weaknesses are being exploited politically at every level. At the local government level, it is what town do you come from? It has even come down to what denomination of religion? In all these, I don’t think theory can solve the problem.

Again, we need visionary leaders. For instance, the man that finally got the job of VC in Markudi was distant third in the exercise. When the council voted, they ranked me number one. But the politicians (military or agbada) decided to give the Tiv man the job.

But if the Tiv man had been a magnanimous leader, ready to work with others, he would have gotten so much better from everyone. But instead, he came with a whip to drive everyone away. Personally I offered to work with him because my ambition then was not to be a VC. I’ve reached my ambition and was enjoying what I was doing before Prof. Idachaba pulled me away.

My greatest disappointment was that the university system graphically thought me that this Nigerian question is real and that those who are leaders should strive to solve the Nigerian questions and it comes by a leader being more broad minded, spreading his hands across barriers because you are there where everyone is seeing you. A leader at every level has the responsibility to lead by examples, not just by mere words.