Category: Education

By Frank Ulom

The President of the University of Calabar, UNICAL Alumni Association, Prof. Yakubu Aboki Ochefu has shed light on the association’s secretariat, the homecoming event to Mark the 50th anniversary of the university and the current students’ loan policy by the President Bola Tinubu-led administration.

Ochefu, who is a Professor of Economic History at the Benue State University, Makurdi, x-rayed all of these and others in an interview with newsmen on Sunday (26th Nov. 2023) in Calabar, adding that the association’s elections would be conducted in the first quarter of 2024.

Prof. Ochefu who is also a former Vice-Chancellor and the current Secretary General of the Committee of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities backed the fight against randy lecturers, disclosed the achievements of the UNICAL Alumni Association and its role in the development of the university as well as proposed a database for the association.

“The National Executive Council of the University of Calabar National Alumni Association held its council meeting on Saturday (25th Nov. 2023) and we took several decisions which we felt it was most important to share with members of the University of Calabar Alumni worldwide, and of course the general public.

“The National Executive Council of the Alumni Association by our constitution comprises of the board of trustees. The board of trustees is led by a gentleman known as Rt. Hon. Bright Omokhodion, who was the former Commissioner and former speaker of the Edo State House of Assembly. It also comprises the National Executive Committee of which I’m the National President, and the chapter chairmen, secretaries and one delegate. At this meeting we had, 20 chapter chairmen and delegates came from all over Nigeria.

“Statutorily, the council is the second highest organ of the Alumni Association. The highest organ is the annual general meeting. When the National Executive Council meets we review some of our presentations and then take decisions that will end up as the agenda for the annual general meeting which should have come up this year, but as a result of a number of meetings and circumstances, some of which had to do with the fact that the national elections that we had in March/April this year disrupted some of our planning so we were not able to hold that elections. We are now scheduling the elections for the first quarter of 2024.

“Some of the decisions we took at this meeting will now be presented to the annual general meeting and they will now direct accordingly. The activities started with a courtesy call on the directorate of alumni relations, Prof. Okom, who then ushered us to pay a courtesy call to the Vice Chancellor of the university, Prof. Florence Obi, during which we raised a number of issues bothering the type of communication that comes out of the University of Calabar which we felt that it more often portray the university in bad light. We believe that the University of Calabar has so many good stories to tell. We know this but we don’t hear it on state and national media. So we believe that it was important for her to look at her communication unit to see the reasons why the University of Calabar is in the news for the wrong reasons and not the right reasons. There are bad universities in Nigeria but they don’t make the type of headline news that the University of Calabar makes.

“For example, the University of Calabar has a lot of award winners both locally and internationally. We don’t hear of these award winners. We have a lot of Alumni of the University of Calabar and researchers who have patents, inventions and who are adding value to both local and global economies. They are not documented. There’s a gentleman from the University of Calabar who recently entered the Guinness Book of Record on a writing hackathon, and the type of publicity that he got was just very pedestrian. What is the communication unit doing about it? All that we hear is that the University of Calabar has randy professors whose level of moral tepidity is so high and it’s in the news on a daily basis. We have an engineering programme that has been vitiated. These are the type of news that would be on the airwaves on a daily basis much more than many of the good things that are coming out of the University of Calabar. We are not saying if bad news emanates it should not be carried, but we are saying that this should also be matched with some of the fantastic things that are happening in this university that are not being communicated to the general public. That’s the point I was trying to make.

“We also commended the Vice Chancellor for the effort she’s making in sanitising some of these issues. The way the university came out head-on to tackle the issue of sex scandal in the faculty of law. We all stood up and supported the university. How many of Professor Ndifons are in the system and the system should not harbour any of such persons? The Alumni Association was brought into the picture as part of the committee that was set up to investigate this matter. And now that the ICPC has taken over the matter we are hoping that the accusations of complicity and witch-hunting will be put to rest.

“We also congratulated her on the effort she has made to sanitise the transcript administration of the university. Our alumni members used to feel very bad that transcript applications used to be very horrendous at the university. But in recent times we now have a situation that if you apply for a transcript you can get a copy of your transcript within 48 hours. She then explained to us that the challenge they now have is the legacy transcripts. The University of Calabar is about 40 years old so for those of us who graduated several years ago our papers have not been digitised, so those ones take a while to come. But if you graduated a few years ago your records would probably be digitised so you will now get your documents back.

“We also raised the issue of synergy between the alumni association with the alumni office because at times we don’t seem to be on the same page in terms of synergising our efforts and relationships, and it creates the impression that we are not working together. The Alumni Association is there to support the Alma Mater to meet some of its fundamental objectives, and we carry the cross of the university because it’s our university and we don’t have any other university. We will support them.

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“And of course, we told her that we were planning an AGM for the first quarter of next year and we are also planning a homecoming for the first quarter of next year. In her response, she said that in 2025 the University of Calabar is going to be 50 years old and there were plans to celebrate their 50th anniversary. So it will make more sense for us to have a grand homecoming, celebrating that 50 rather than do a homecoming in 2024 and then do another one in 2025, which was presented to the National Council of State and was accepted. The National Council of State also constituted an electoral committee to elect new executives into the National Executive Committee. A 5-man committee was inaugurated to plan for the election that will take place in the first quarter of next year, probably March or April. That’s basically what transpired at our National Executive Council meeting that held yesterday,” Ochefu told newsmen.

What is it that thing you could not achieve and would want the next administration to achieve?

“We came into office with a strategic plan. And in that strategic plan, we itemised a number of things that we wanted to do. But one of the things that stuck out as a sore thorn that we could not achieve, that will be transitioning to the incoming executive, would be that of the alumni secretariat. We inherited an alumni secretariat that had collapsed and we put in a mechanism to see how we could redesign that building and finish it. We did the complete redesign of the building but as at the time we were now trying to put resources together to start the reconstruction, prices began to skyrocket and the economy took a downturn. For me, that will be the biggest disappointment that we will be handing over to the incoming administration.”

What is the thing that got you most excited as an achievement?

“The thing that got me most excited was the fact that we were able to reconcile the factions of the alumni association that we inherited. You will recall that when we were elected there were a number of chapters that did not participate in the reconciliation effort under the Vice Chancellorship of Prof. Zana Akpagu. When we were sworn in, we took the mandate and said let’s go and reconcile because we are one family. There’s no need to have two factions. We went and engaged with the aggrieved factions and we were able to bring them back to the fold and harmonise the various executives. So we now have one national body without any faction. That now enables us to host the conference of the Alumni Association of Nigerian Universities.

“The first quarter meeting of that conference we were able to host at the University of Calabar and put us on a super platform to be able to contest for the National Chairmanship of the Conference of Alumni Association of Nigerian Universities. The Conference of Alumni Association of Nigerian Universities is a 31-year-old body that houses all the chairmen of alumni associations from all the member universities in Nigeria. In December last year, we went into that election and the University of Calabar was able to secure the chairmanship position. This is to show you that our efforts at reconciling our differences and adding value to the work we are doing, we’ve been able to escalate it to national level and we are now providing leadership for other alumni associations in Nigeria.”

In what way has the alumni contributed to the development of the university?

“The University of Calabar Alumni Association has been part and parcel of the university’s development for a very long time. If you ask me as a person, I will say we are not there yet in terms of the quantum of institutional support that the alumni association has been able to provide to the university, but we have done our own bit, individually and collectively.

“As you are aware, what we now have as the engineering programme of the University of Calabar, started as an alumni project under the auspices of the current senate president, when he was the governor of Akwa Ibom state. He was the one who provided the seed grant that started that project. A number of laboratories have been commissioned by the members of the alumni association. Between the alumni association as a body, and between our members who aggregate around chapters, and who aggregate around graduating classes, there’s practically no month that we don’t do one thing or the other for the university. So we broke the thing down into manageable units. You don’t need to have a million naira before you support your alma mater. Your class of ’86 can come together and identify a project, and say this class of ’86 this is what we want to do.

“For example, as we were going round yesterday we passed through hall 2 and we saw the condition which hall 2 was in. I told my roommate who was with me in hall 2 in 1980. Then it was a hostel reserved for medical students. I told him that those of us who lived in Hall 2 for that period of time should put together a platform so that we can come together and raise money at least paint Hall 2 so that it will be our own contribution to the hostel that we stayed in. Things like that are some of the things that we do both at the national level and individual and class levels.”

How many chapters do you have and what’s the numerical strength of the alumni?

“We’ve been rebuilding and developing the database of the alumni. The records have been a bit of a challenge for us to compile but it has been a work in progress. We have a current database. Part of that database we insisted that it should have a registration number and a lot of people can’t remember their registration number. We didn’t want someone to come say I’m an alumnus of UNICAL without trying it with an identifier. We are going to put together something in the neighbourhood of about 42,000 persons that are on the current database that is being managed by the alumni directorate. We currently have 36 chapters nationwide in the six geopolitical zones. The northwest geopolitical zone has the least number of chapters with only one chapter in Kaduna which is not a very active chapter.

“The northwest geopolitical zone has two chapters – Wukari and Jalingo. While the north-central geopolitical zone has chapters in Benue, Nasarawa, FCT. We have chapters in the southwest, south and the southeast. Our constitution provides for diaspora chapters. We have not been very lucky in having a very strong diaspora chapter. We have a vice president for the diaspora, who has started getting the members to meet together. Had about three virtual meetings on Zoom. It hasn’t functioned seamlessly the way we wanted. It’s still a work in progress, but locally in Nigeria, we have these chapters that I’ve mentioned. We don’t have chapters outside West Africa or Africa as the case may be. These are the two situations we have.”

Are you satisfied with the strength, like the number you have?

“No, we are not satisfied with the number. As I said, it is still a work in progress. The thing about alumni is that you need to have milestone events to engage them. By the time we are celebrating our 50th anniversary, we should be able to be celebrating with maybe a hundred thousand alumni on our database. We will give ourselves that target and then work assiduously towards that, and then let the whole members know that UNICAL is going to be 50 and you cannot miss being part of that celebration and making your own contribution to your alma mater. We have like about 12 generations of graduates. I belong to the third generation so you can see the gap. Some of the people who are in UNICAL now qualify to be my grandchildren. The important thing is that we are all part of one big family and we need to come together and support our alma mater.”

How can one register for the alumni?

“There’s a lacuna in the whole process and that has to do with the fact that when you come for convocation, you take the oath of office and you are formally sworn into the association. So if you don’t come for the convocation, that particular aspect of the transition from being a student to being an alumnus doesn’t quite happen. It’s something that we really need to work on. What students actually remember is that they are paying N2,000 as part of their clearance for the alumni association and then nothing happens thereafter.

“You are supposed to pay that N2,000 when you come for the convocation you are sworn into the alumni association, and then the chapters that are available in the domain where you work or live are now presented to you and you will now choose. For example, in Calabar we have two chapters – we have a chapter called the Nest Chapter that’s based in the university that targets graduates of the university who are working in the university. Then we have the Calabar chapter which takes care of other persons. If you graduate and you are sent to do national service in Makurdi for example, you can now engage with the Makurdi chapter. If you go to Abuja you will engage with the Abuja chapter. If you are in Ikom, Cross River, you will engage with the Ikom chapter.”

On the student loan, what is your take?

“This is a very interesting question. What Nigerians don’t remember is that the Student Loan Act is not new. We had student loans in this country in the 70s. And the whole concept is to support indigent persons to acquire post-secondary education. Over time, the issue of cost-sharing of university education became a sore point for us stakeholders. How much does it cost the federal government to deliver a university education to a student in the faculty of medicine? How much of the cost does the student bear? That conversation kept going back and forth in relation to the financial autonomy of the university and the major source of funding of that university.

“Now the federal government, for the past 40 years has said the cost of tuition fees which constitute about 70 percent of the cost of university education is borne by the federal government and taken away from the families. So parents and their students will pay the associated cost, not the cost of tuition – what universities refer to as charges, accommodation, registration, stationery, health, insurance, sports and all those other charges. That has been in play.

“This government has now come up and said now look, we know that universities are struggling with funding, we are still going to maintain a tuition-free regime. But in terms of the associated cost, the universities are free to charge what the economy creates to be able to provide those services. In the event that the students cannot meet that cost, we are going to provide a loan for the students to be able to meet that obligation. That was how this new student loan act was repackaged based on the experience of the past I have presented.

“When it came out. We looked at it and said no. As presented, this will not fly because the condition precedent for you to access the loan is faulty. The time frame for repaying the loan is also faulty. The wording of the act in terms of what constitutes who is qualified to take the loan is also faulty because in one breath it says you have to be an undergraduate student to enjoy that loan. In another breath, it said you have to be a fresh student to take the loan. That is, it’s your admission letter that qualifies you to take the loan. So I take the loan as a fresh student and then I go into my second year and my fundamentals changed, it means that I can no longer access the loan. Or I am a third-year student that I have been paid all this while, but in my third year my status changed and then I can no longer take the loan, what happens to me? So we felt that it was important for them to take that act back and review it so that all the stakeholders can make inputs before it can now qualify to be a proper loan for indigent students who may need it to augment their costs.

“As I said, this associated cost, beyond the hostel, the sports, exams and all those other fees you pay, there’s also the living cost, which most times we don’t talk about. The food, the toiletries, the data and all those things are costs that you must pay for if you are in the university. When you aggregate all that together it comes to a substantial amount that students or parents must also look for means to pay. Either way, it works out to support. We enjoyed scholarships when we were in school. We enjoyed bursaries. Local governments supported their students. University education should be such that if you have an admission there must be somebody somewhere who will help you to bear that cost because it’s an expensive cost. So it’s either you get a scholarship from any of the NGOs, and if you can’t get it from them, then you fall back to a loan. This is what happens all over the world. And I think this government has done well. It’s just that the loan was hurriedly packaged and it did not quite meet the best standard of this type of loan.”