Managing an unconventional university has been very challenging, you don’t have the luxury of   normal 8 hours sleep everyday. It is not only managing the university, for some of you who are from conventional system and you now come to study in open university, you will find out that if you are not equal to the task, you can never study in the open university. You will have to learn to   apportion your time for your activities and your studies and you will learn to work everyday

continuously. It is not the question of I will wait and do crash program at the end of the day; you   either do it or you don’t. And managing an unconventional university like the open university, you   have to be very patient, calculative, plan and think ahead of time and you need alot of vision or

else it won’t work because the so many factors opposing your progress are so diverse and numerous.

Not because these people want to oppose you because of your face or the system. The most   challenging factor is that all these people who are trying to pull you down are ignorant of the   system. They are doing that thinking they are doing the best for the society but are ignorant of   the enormous benefits from open and distance learning. Our challenges is to try and educate them.

That is why I feel very happy whenever I have little chance to talk to gentlemen of the press like   you because you are the mouthpiece, earpiece and the eyes of the wider society. You are the one to   educate them through your print and electronic media and that is the only way we can help this   society grow. Whether you like it or not, we will not have any other society and country like this.

Any where you go or travelled to and stay there for a lengthy period, you can never be a first class citizen no matter how progressive you are. So if you are so good, remain here and help and   make your people relevant in the whole world.

 

The open university seems to have issues with the body that is over seeing legal practices in Nigeria because in paid advertorials, it was said that the open university has no business giving   out law degrees and they stated their reasons. What you are doing about it?

Every university that has been established in the whole world has what we call the blue print. A   university that does not have a blue print is not a university and does not exist. That blue print   contain the original information of what the university is supposed to do and what the university

is approved to do. In that blue print is where you have the number of faculties or what we call   school in the open university and all the number of departments or the academic units in the   university and also all the number of courses. To produce this blue print, it takes the federal   ministry of education which is the supervising ministry for all educational programmes in this   country. It was the effort of the federal ministry of education and the NUC that brought about the   blue print of the national open university as far back as 1983 when this university first started.

In that blue print, one of the school approved to graduate students is the school of legal studies.

Out of the ten schools, we have established seven plus the post graduate school. Why I am   explaining this to you to this level is to let you know that the school of law is not an illegal   body. It is an approved school and all the course contents were written and prepared by professors   of law from different universities and have followed the curriculum as approved by NUC and that is   why we are operating the school of law. But surprisingly when we got to the level of graduating our   students and in fact we have graduated two sets now. NUC has come and accredited our law school and   we passed. When we call on the council for legal education because they said it is a requirement   for anybody to go to law school and to practice, they must come and accredit the programme of the   university and humbly invited them but they refused to come.

 

Unionism is not allowed in NOUN, don’t you think you are infringing on the fundamental human right   of the students to the right of association?

Yes! It is true because the open university is not a conventional university, it is open and   distance learning and interestingly this is the only university that democratise, demicified and   liberalised education. It is the only university that gives you access without any hindrance.

Here the question will be, if you are in a university that democratises education, why would you   say you would welcome unionism and other pressure group? The reason is simple. We can not   accommodate or operate freely with unionism because of the diversity of the nature of our students   in terms of age, class, status and some already belonging to other professional unions and bodies.

For example, in our university we do not have that requirement of age limit like the conventional system that will tell you you can not be admitted into the system unless you are seventeen years   and above. And I can tell you that there is no any conventional university not only in Nigeria but   across the globe where you will see a ninety(90) years old student. In open university for example,   I just informed the new student that the youngest university undergraduate today in our record in   15 years old and the oldest is 103 years old and the oldest is in 200 level. I can give you   reference to find that person. I am not just giving you theoretical information but fact. He is the   paramount ruler of emevo community in delta state. Because of his age, he was given automatic   scholarship to study in the university and he is still studying and for him to study in the school,   we bear everything. When you come to the class settings, we have governors, senators, house of representatives,   ministers, vice Chancellors, commissioners and all sets of people of different age, we have   professional journalists like you.

 

How many students do you have in your enrolment presently?

At the moment, we have about 200,000 students and I can tell you, we have admitted beyond that.

Even at this number, I am not still happy about it because I thought with the present matriculation, we should have been about 500,000. This university has the capacity to accommodate   1.5 million students and this is the only way we can solve the problem of non-admission of students   who are after conventional university that can not be accommodated. Every year, about 1.5 million   Nigerians write JAMB trying to go into the conventional university. At the moment as we speak I   think we have about 126-136 universities in Nigeria, both private, state and federal government   owned. Out of all these over 100 universities mentioned, they can only accommodate about 500,000   students per session. Whether you force them or come with a signed and stamped note from any of the   authorities, if there is no chance, there is no way the universities can accommodate more knowing   that these students are going to take lectures in the lecture room. So the conventional   universities to a fault has a carrying capacity. If they exceed that, when the NUC goes there to   accredits them, they will fail them. But in the open university, we don’t have that limit called   carrying capacity. We can carry as many that are willing to learn because we do not sit in a room   or class.

We are not a direct teaching university, we sell our knowledge to you over the distance without   undermining quality.

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