Professor Michael Umale Adikwu is former vice chancellor of the University of Abuja. In this interview with BINTA SHAMA, he speaks on the need to establish a national research foundation to deepen research culture in universities to attract foreign patronage.
What is your take on the current crisis between ASUU and the federal government over the issue of IPPIS and the union’s reluctance to reopen universities on the basis of COVID-19 threats?
The problem is not the COVID-19 that is causing the strike. Some universities have resumed. Private universities I know like VERITAS, Bingham, and many others, are coming up. The problem between ASUU and the federal government is the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS). This is the major bone of contention. You know the idea of IPPIS was muted during the time of President Goodluck Jonathan. However, the implementation started in the current administration. The problem of the educational system in this country is that stakeholders haven’t sat down to critically look into the issue to find solutions.
When the IPPIS came, ASUU was resistant. Now other unions that joined are also on strike, so ASUU says, let’s develop UTAS, and I’m sure if the federal government studies that, it may have some meaning. Because if I was taking N500,000 as a professor, which is nothing in this economy, and my salary is being brought to N200,000, that is what IPPIS has done. That is why SANNU, Colleges and Polytechnics’ unions also threatened to go on strike because the IPPIS is dividing their salaries into pieces. So, I think they need to come together and look at it.
What has helped the system now is COVID-19 because people are not in a hurry to go back to school, but I think they can work around it and get a neutral body to study what ASUU has developed if they are not convinced. One of the things the federal government is afraid is that there are lots of implications, but I have always said if you are an academic, you should be allowed to teach in one or two other places. In overseas, it is done. But with the current IPPIS you can’t get salaries in two places, which is one of the things ASUU is saying. ASUU is saying that people who are in sabbatical, what do you do with them? They are saying some of our people are even overseas, so what do you do? There are lots of questions that will have to be answered. Once that is done, I think they will find a new way. You should note that decisions are taken with the government but ASUU is neglected. In China for instance, when they want to make decisions they will say, well let’s subject it to research. So, they have data to work on and with that when they are putting their effort to solve any problem, it is not based on just hearsay or newspaper report. There are critical data they want to use, so with that, decisions are always taken appropriately. The research is attached to such decisions and the problem is solved. In Nigeria, we don’t do that, which is a big problem. The other aspect is that since people are not being trained to do researches, there is a gap.
If we are doing researches, people are getting things, and academics are getting things. In overseas, many of our people that are there are not lecturing. If you go to America, they take you as a staff member. You are employed in the university but you must get your own grants, and with the grants, you hire post graduate students who will help you to do the research, and you know what that means. The pressure is not on the government. For each research grant you get, 52 percent of it goes to the university because you are using their electricity, their water, and other facilities to do the research. So, you use only 48 percent. But somebody can win 10 grants and can win up to 10-30 million in a year; dollars not naira, with that, he is able to get his own students, he is able to buy some equipment, he is able to recruit people even from overseas. But you find out that this gap is missing, so the burden is largely on the federal government, they must provide everything and I’m sure, no government will be able to shoulder the huge responsibility. That was why I was saying you don’t just open up university. Where do you get the lecturers?
I don’t want to talk about what happen in educational system, teachers are meant to be special people. I don’t like talking about ASUU and the federal government because we must look at it critically. TETfund is doing its best but are they doing enough? Is the money in TETfund enough for people to get research and get involved? In overseas, it is not their salaries that they depend on; they do a lot of research and these bring additional income.
TETfund recently inaugurated 163-man team to ensure paradigm shift to research and development. Do you think that is the way to address the problem of research in the country?
I have mentioned that TETfund is doing something but that is not enough. What TETfund is doing is very good but I always question those things. If it is overseas they are doing that, they will get people from other countries to come and review them. So what we are saying is that such type of intervention should be constant, but people need to be caught early not when they are old. In overseas, they have research universities. Which university in this country is called a research university? These are the issues.
What are the necessary steps you think Nigeria should take to boost R&D?
First of all, there should be a foundation, not under any field; they don’t need to borrow. They can get money from TETfund or PTDF, fix that amount and don’t allow Nigerians to be doing it, bring young people from overseas, people who are just finishing their doctoral research. There is an adage that ‘when you are not hungry, you lost appetite, you don’t want to eat, the only way to make such people to eat is to eat with others,’ so by the time you have such people doing research in our own laboratories, our people will also learn from them. Do you know that when you are going to do research overseas, the first question they ask is the kind of equipment you have used in the sense that you include it in your proposal. So if there is a piece of equipment they have and have no knowledge of, others will learn from you while using it. So if we can have a foundation that is going to bring people from overseas, that is good. Rather than call it ‘Nigerian Research Fund,’ it should be renamed ‘Nigeria Research Foundation’, let somebody be after it and advertise it and that is how you internationalise your system. You know our schools are always rated 1000 and below because there are no foreigners here in the schools coming to learn. The worst thing that happens in Nigeria is that you must be from a particular village before you will become someone important or vice chancellor in a university; that is terrible. Such doesn’t happen in any country. In the UK, some of their VCs are from USA. You don’t even need to have a PhD if a university is distressed financially. What they are looking for is somebody who can bring in money. We are doing things upside down and times have gone when universities were meant to give only certificates.
