Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, SAN
By Anietie Akpan
Former Senate Leader, Pro Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council of the Federal University Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, SAN; in a chat with some newsmen in Calabar at weekend. He spoke on the declining standard of education in the country, sexual harassment in universities, the milestones in FUOYE, governance in Cross River, politics and others. Excerpts :
What’s your Assessment of Education in Nigeria?
I keep saying that the real resource or the real wealth of any nation is not in its natural resources or natural endowments.The real wealth of any nation is in its young men and his young women, his youth. And those youth are a resource only when they are educated or they are skilled and they are empowered. But if they are not educated and they are not skilled or empowered, they are no longer a resource.They become a cause, you know.
So if you look at all those countries that have done well, you take a country like Japan, or take Israel, for instance, or take Taiwan, or take South Korea, what natural endowments do they have?.Actually, zero.
But today they dominate the world. Why? It is because of Education. See where China is with technology. It is ecause they have developed an educational system and an educational curriculum that trains you to confront the challenges of not just today, but the challenges of tomorrow. Education that gives you a futuristic perspective of global development.
But here we are still struggling with courses like classics and all those things. Yes, that is a source of knowledge, but today’s world and tomorrow’s world will be technology driven. I sat with a gentleman on a flight from the US to London some three, four years back, and he turned out to be a University professor in the US. When we got talking and I got to know he was a professor, I said to him, Prof. how will the school curriculum in the US look like in the next five years? He said, Victor, I can’t tell you of how the curriculum of my own University will look like in the next 12 months. I can’t even tell you because it’s evolving so very quickly. Today you have Artificial Intelligence (AI). It’s a new thing in town, it has altered virtually everything, how we even approach learning now.
I will tell you as a joke. I saw on social media a young lady with the middle name and surname that looked like a friend of mine in UK that I lost contact with. So I said, okay, let me just chat with her so that through her I will be able to connect the father. Her English was terrible. And then by the time we had chatted twice, it was like, uncle, can I have money for my project? I’m writing my project. So I said to her, in what language? Because your English is very bad. In what language are you going to use? She said, I’m going to use AI. So that is not learning, you say, but our lecturers accept it. So AI has even become another challenge.
And if we don’t begin, because we are already left behind, our budgetary provision is not sufficient to even take us to the UN threshold of 15 percent, we are still very far behind. So there is a challenge to education today. And while we are struggling with where we are, the world is moving ahead. So the gap between us and the rest of the world will just keep widening, you know, so we must do something. Why we are sitting here now sharing ideas and sharing thoughts is because we went to school.
Years back, we wanted to do some work for UBA. late Richard Ebri and I. And they said we should go to their area office in Uyo and we went to the area office. Clearly the Area Manager did not know who I was because he just came. He passed me in front. Richard has been there 25 years. So we are looking at more than 25 years ago. So he just passed a number of times and one of the staff who knew me went to him to say, these are the lawyers who came for this. He said, no, no, no, they don’t qualify. So I now said to him, sir, how do you mean?And he replied, as a policy we don’t engage lawyers called after 1990. I said, I wasn’t called in 1990. Why do you assume that I was called in 1990? He said, from your looks and I said, okay, let me tell you the truth. I have led a life deceiving people with my looks. So let me tell you the truth. I was called in 1978, and then I was like, but why was the 1990 date? Because as far as the bank was concerned, the standard of education started falling after 1990.
So education is key, it is the window to our tomorrow. And then for me, I went into education sector by just share circumstances. You know, my wife was running a school. It was when she passed on and I was afraid that there was going to be a gap on the school because she was physically present, you know, and dominated how the school taught. So I needed to move in immediately as a way of reassuring the parents that, look, you still have the same kind of attention that you had when Madam was alive. So I now got involved and the school is nursery, primary and secondary. At least I now have a background at that level of education until this University stuff now came. Now I have a comprehensive picture of what the problems in education are right now.
On sexual harassment issue at FUOYE, what is the situation now ?
For the issue of sexual harassment, the University Governing Council set up a committee to investigate and I was told two weeks ago when we had our convocation that the report was ready but because of the week long activities of the convocation, we could not take the report. So the committee formerly asked for an extension of time which we granted and I am hoping that we will have an emergency meeting very shortly to consider the report and close that matter. I am anxious to close that matter because the University is now being defined by that allegation of that sexual harassment rather than its other achievements. We need to put that matter behind us.
What would you say is the success story of FUOYE
First, like I said, it is the most fourth subscribed public University. It is not the University that says so, it is JAMB. It is JAMB that processes admissions that has said we are the fourth most subscribed public university. So the question will be why has the University become so attractive? The quality of its academic offerings and I think all their courses are fully accredited by the National Universities Commission.
Yes, we still have a deficit in terms of infrastructure. There’s a gap. I’ll give you the most obvious one which is accommodation. The students live in the various villages, because we don’t have enough on campus accommodation.
Two, we don’t have any staff quarters of any kind. What makes a university a University is that it is essentially a community. There’s academic work going on or no academic work going on. It’s a community of people seeking knowledge. And that is why staff clubs are very important in the University because that is where people need to unwine. We don’t have that. I still stay in a hotel in Ado Ekiti and then every morning I do two hours drive to Ekiti. So you would have lost two hours in traffic by the time you get there, the best part of you is already gone because you are tired. By the time it’s getting to five o’clock, your colleagues on the council are coming to worry, Oh Oga, let’s go now it is getting late. So you don’t really exhaust yourself. I would like to sit down and work until I fall asleep, but then you can’t do that. So there is that challenge of infrastructure, in the classrooms we are still trying to catch up. We have achieved quite a lot in 14 years and if you check the last visitation panel report as the basis, you would see how much has been achieved.
There are lots of complains in the Universities, involving sorting and the rest. How can we tackle this? How do you handle cases of sexual harassment?
Well, let’s take the sexual harassment. First of all. I think you people have known me long enough to know the kind of person that I am. The fact is that I don’t joke with time. I don’t tolerate this issue of compromising the system for to get certificates because the certificate I have from University of Lagos is respected all over the world.
When I went to Lokoja, the first thing I did was, in two months, I sacked six professors for sexual harassment. It did not happen while I was there, it happened before I went there. They were investigating but you know how our systems work, they tried to protect themselves. I am a lawyer and we are trained to read from introduction, facts and conclusion. So when you have read the facts and they do not tally with the conclusion, then there is something there.
So I told them to take it back and align their findings with the conclusion. And they had no choice but to go and do the needful. I said, what does the university law say? What does the punishment say? Oh, some of them are old men they said but I sacked them. I don’t tolerate that because it degrades the value of the certificate you are holding.
Children go to miracle centres write exams and get As and the Bs they can not defend. This is disturbing. The academic system has become so thoroughly compromised in the country for a long time and it brings me back to the University where I am and why it has suddenly become so attractive to students. Apart from the fact that it is located in Ekiti and Ekiti is known for love for education, the main reason why FUOYE has become so attractive is because we have not started suffering from these disruptions to calendars. In spite of Covid and the prolonged nine months of ASUU strike in the same period, our students still graduated on time and our timetable has become invoilable.
And secondly, all our courses are fully accredited. I told this long story so that you can sift the issues. This issue of sexual harassment is a no go area, if you are caught, I deal with you straight, same goes for sorting.
Currently, I am looking for a way of getting people who can sponsor publications of our lecturers that cost as much as 700 dollars. and we pay directly to the publishers, so that our lecturers can publish and that way, you do not need anybody to sort you out. Those are the things that make our certificates neglected.
When I resumed duty, first I met the staff, then met the students and the unions and we all agreed that this is where we are going. It is in the interest of everybody for the world to take our certificate seriously. How will they take our certificate seriously? If there’s integrity to our timetable, a four year programme must be a four year programme. If Charles, for instance, graduates BSc Physics at his age, Charles himself should be able to justify that Bsc that he has. He himself should be able to justify it, you know, and then create the proper academic environment. But you must talk to the unions. I had an agreement, an understanding with the unions. The only union I’m still having issues with is SSANU because they prefer to talk about sexual harassment of a lady who herself is not, you know, but with the other unions. ASUU has told me that sir, for as long as you are here we would rather dialogue with you than go on strike and we have a deal on that. All the other unions said, look, we had rather talk because I have told them my office, you know how my office is, I don’t shut my doors. It’s the same thing there, leave it open. Anybody who wants to come and see me, he should come in, let me hear from him and then we put our heads together to find a solution to whatever he said. So the unions are critical as far as I’m concerned. This strike things has become very boring. Strike as a weapon for negotiations has become very boring. So the unions must be a bit more creative in how they approach their grievance mechanisms.
What’s your impression on Calabar- Itu road?
I started practice, if you recall, in Ogoja in 1979 before I relocated to Calabar in 1981. Ogoja to Calabar was 2 hours. Exactly 2 hours. Ogoja- Ikom was 35 minutes. Ikom Calabar was 1 hour 25 minutes. When I moved to Calabar, the bulk of my practice, Ogoja to Obudu was 30 minutes. Obudu to Ikom was 35 minutes. And Calabar to Obudu was also exactly two hours. When I moved to Calabar, the bulk of my practice was in today’s Akwa Ibom, then Akwa Ibom was still part of Cross River. It was so because most of our cases were in Eket. Eket to Calabar was 60 minutes, Ikot Ekpene was 60 minutes, Aba was 1 hour 20 minutes and there was no airport in Uyo. If you missed your flight in Calabar, you rushed to Port Harcourt, Rivers state it was exactly two hours. I remember there was a case I was doing with the late Dr. Mudiaga Oje, he was one of the earliest SAN and President of NBA but he was based in Warri and I went to court with him in Warri. I left Calabar that morning, went to court with him in Warri, came back to Calabar and still played tennis. Can you try it now? We did not have a Court of Appeal in Calabar until 1999. So the Court of Appeal was in Enugu and we will go to Enugu and come back. We never slept in Enugu. We go to Enugu, finish our case and come back same day but today, I don’t know, anywhere in the south you can do that now.
We used to drive with Professor Roland (Ndoma-Egba) from Lagos to Calabar, Lagos to Eket, where the old man was. It was seven or eight hours but today, where will you go to in the south that will take you less than a day?
So it is not just the Calabar-Itu road. If you try to move from Onne in Port Harcourt to the town, it’s like half a day’s drive. It is a national collapse of infrastructure. This is a distance that should take you ordinarily, 10, 15 minutes, you know. Current administration of President Bola Tinubu is trying to fix all that.
How will you assess the administration of the Governor of Cross River, Senator Prince Bassey Otu?
The administration of Senator Bassey Otu is resetting governance to traditional methods of governance that we are familiar with. You know, the eight years before him, it was eight years of experimentation of all sorts of styles. It was eight years of experiments. And those experiments have not been subjected to any empirical studies. So Otu is just trying to reset the system back to the kind of governance that we were taught in school.
On Politics and your plans for 2027?
I haven’t left politics. I’m in politics. My only plan now is to continue talking for my people.You see, people mistake politics for holding office, elective office or appointive office. When last did Chief Edwin Clark hold any office? Since in the days of Gowon, now he just died at 97. So for almost 50 years, he did not hold any office, but he was the voice of his people. The same thing with Chief Tony Ani. So you don’t need to hold an office to be involved in speaking for your people.
God did not take me to this level for me to go and keep quiet, it’s too late. I remember in 2019, when I tried to go back to the Senate when then President Buhari said I should go back to the senate. I had a meeting in Ikom and somebody asked when I would retire. I asked why and he said, I am too old. My classmates who are still in service, are Justices of the Supreme court and they did not retire. Even those teaching in Universities have not retired.
I do not know what 2027 would bring because I have been everything that I did not plan to be and I have never been anything that I planned to be but I will still be talking for my people, whether from the palace or from the trench.
That children of the poor can not access the students loans?
I think one of the achievements we have in FUEYE is that a number of students have benefited . This is the first time I am hearing that only the children of the rich benefit. One will like to do a study then use the students of FUOYE as an example using one of its departments to analyze it. But it does appear to me it is available to everybody who applies because of the way it is managed.
It is a scheme that I endorse because during our time I even got a student loan which I paid back when I started working as a lawyer in Ogoja. We had the students loan scheme and the scholarship programmes. It was a big thing in those days. We had a scholarship board run by Michael Mon paying school fees for students all over the world so I think this is a good initiative
