Universities, nation’s development rest on alumni associations-Don

Emeka Ibemere

The role of Universities’ Alumni, came into front burner on December 14, 2014,  at the  Sickle Cell Centre  Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi Araba, Yaba, Lagos State, when Nnamdi Azikiwe University Alumni Association, Lagos State Chapter gathered for their annual lecture/Dinner to wrap up the business of the year.

It was an event that attracted the high and low of the University including businessmen, entrepreneurs, political class, academics and indigenes of Anambra State in their mass.

Academic lecturers, students, researchers, journalists, professionals and resources persons spoke on the topic: the role of Alumni in Nation building, a topic which added flavor to the august event.

 Despite, the conspicuous absence of the quest speaker, Festus Odumegwu, former Managing Director of the Nigerian Breweries, the second quest speaker, Ikem Ume- Ezeoke, judiciously handled the topic to the convictions of the guests.   

Delivering his lecture, entitled: the role of alumni in nation building, Ume- Ezeoke; said alumni association has the potential to be generous and loyal. He said the involvement of alumni is beneficial to their institutions, government and the entire nation.

According to him, the alumni are the ambassadors of their universities and added that they are great role models to the students and often offer their practical experience to support them.

Ume-Ezeoke also quipped that alumni have fund-raising prospects in raising funds for their schools and most times are available for the institutions and members. The quest speaker is of the view that alumni helps in making their universities become bigger, more successful and stronger in enhancing the values of their universities.

According to him, there is always healthy relationship between an alumni and the university where both benefits by having preferential access to campus facilities, and negotiated benefits.

“Late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua funded the SBRS project at Funtua with the sum of N500million and he equally built a hostel at the main campus which is named after him”, he added.

“The former governor of Cross River State, His Excellency, Donald Duke, gave faculty of Law 30 computers, former governor of Nassarawa State, Abdullahi Adamu renovated the faculty of Arts Building and provided N7million towards hosting a conference on Agriculture in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The former governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi, sank 12 boreholes on the ABU campus and also equipped the accounting department’s e-learning Centre and former Kebbi State governor, Alhaji Adamu Aliero built the faculty of engineering’s Dean’s office”. Speaking further, he emphasis that the role of alumni in nation building cannot be ignored, disclosing that they are professional bodies which need to be very impactful in aligning with the private and public sectors to enhance capacity building to develop the nation.

“What the alumni has given back and what the institutions have also given to the alumni members has made it imperative for both to fuse a stronger relationship and come with a solid framework to help the society, government and individual to foster a more robust process for a cleaner and healthy system, “Ume-Ezeoke stated.

“Alumni associations are very important aspect of the society. They are forward academic enviroment saddled with creating more solid institutions. The university highly depends on them to help in mentoring and providing funds to solve pressing needs in the universities”.

Earlier before the lecture, Victor Chukwuma Obineme, President of Lagos Chapter of Nnamdi Azikiwe Alumni Association, who in his opening remarks gave the history of the association and said the association came into being by March 2013, which marked the grand take off of the association and that since then, it has been on till date.

“When you are talking about Alumni association, you are talking about old students of a school. The society has trained us; this is the time for us to give back to the society what they have given to us. We have been trained; we have learnt a lot, it is time for us to give back to the society.  When you look at the theme of the lecture of today: ‘The Role of Alumni in Nation Building’, the alumni are the microcosm of the society. So if you build a man you build the society”, Obineme stated.

“So we have been trained and we want to inculcate into the society those things that we have gathered from the university. We want to inculcate the real norms and correct the ills of the society through the alumni association, that’s why we have gathered today to tell the world that Nnamdi Azikiwe University, we have come to stay”.

On the role of the Chapter to the University, since its formation, Obineme explained that the Lagos State Chapter has not been fully active because of numerous challenges.

“We will not say we have built skyscraper for the school but in human resources, we have been very engaged in the university. We are concerned about the human beings for them to become better people in the society that is our core value for now. We want to invest in the society; it is not about material things or giving them buses”. He said,

“We have been engaged in lectures, networks. If you look at the result of the last law school where only 30 percent passed law school, it is a wakeup call for everybody that this is abnormal and something has to be done. That’s why we are standing and saying no, that there must be turn around. So Nnamdi Azikiwe alumni association has come to say there is a cause that we must have to purse to a logical end to better the society”.

According to the NAU Alumni President, to train human capacity was very easy by inculcating the real values of our society to the young ones. He explained that Nigeria was like a real river without tributaries in terms of culture.

“Why we are having the problems we are having in the society is that we have not been able to craft a political ideology which is acceptable to the norms and values of our given society. We have been living on borrowed culture, borrowed political ideology. We tried the unitary system of government it failed us, we tried parliamentary, it failed us, we are today struggling with presidential system of government why because we have not taken cognizance of a heterogeneous nature of our politics in Nigeria. So that is why we have called for this lecture, so we can tell the world that this is the way forward for Nigeria”.   

On what the Alumni are doing in the fight against secret cult in the University, even though the menace has gone down, Obineme stated that the Alumni are working against it.

“It might interest you to know that I, Victor Chukwuma Obineme, the SUG president 1992/93 session, was the first person or first President of Nnamdi Azikiwe University to inaugurate anti secret cult squad. Calling all the security operatives that we are the students in the university; the police, army, police, the Navy, the air force, SSS, we gathered all of them and inculcated the real values that we wanted in the university”, he explained.

 “Look, if you are found wanting, before you would be given your clearance, you must go through this security squad.  So, through that, we were able to inculcate the real values of the society into the students and most of them who were members of the secrete cult were very willing to give up. And a lot of them gave up. Because, we have sustained that, and that was why I said we like building human capacity. And we have not allowed that to die”.

He disclosed that any Vice chancellor that takes over like the new Vice chancellor Professor Joseph must not die. “Culture is the core values of a particular society handed over to generation to generation. That is what we have sustained in the university. It is not a Sicily (Italian Mafia City), of our time but now a citadel of our academic learning”.

Barrister Nwafili Okwuosa, National President of the Nnamdi Azikiwe Alumni Association, in his speech said he was happy that Lagos branch has come to stay. According to him, the Alumni association has been on in Lagos several times but anytime it kicks off; it fizzles out.

“But I ‘m convinced that it has come to stay because the man who is the branch chairman, talking about Onowu is somebody who has a consuming passion for the Nnamdi Azikiwe University and everything that pertains to it”.

He said the NAU has 20 functional branches throughout the country. He disclosed that Enugu and Lagos States were resuscitated while Warri, Owerri, Uyo, Nsukka are to take off as Port Harcourt branch is strong.

 “If you set up an alumni association, the hope is for the members to begin to contribute money in order to do something, you are going to have an uphill task, you are finding it difficult to bring them together because the alumni association is essentially to network and help one another and then you have a few to help their schools to whenever and where they can. We have a lot of us who are in positions here and there; like in NUC, in the ministry of education Abuja and what have you and those in political offices. These are positions people are supposed to use and been using. What alumni association does is to synergize these different privileged positions to help the school”, Okwuosa said

“Then there is unfortunate situation in the way the school is run and the relationship between the school and the association. It’s just unfortunate because it shouldn’t be so. I discovered that for a long time the managers of Nnamdi Azikiwe University had done everything possible to see that alumni association does not stand. It is hard to believe but that’s the truth. They’ve done everything to sty fold the association from the centre. I realized at a close study that this whole thing has to do with alumni registration fee”.

Speaking further, he revealed that the school has withhold the alumni’s funds from graduating students who go for clearance and paid their alumni membership money to the school but that the school refused to remit the money to the coffers of the alumni.

“You know every student upon graduation as part of your final clearance the school held alumni association to get this money paid, that is to get members registered as part of alumni member and they pay some money at that point. I paid the N400 when I graduated in 1980; right now that money is N5000, 000. We discovered that for some time the school had colluded with some of my predecessors to embezzle this money actually”, the lawyer revealed.

“So when I came on board I wanted to put stop to that, in fact it is one of my campaign promises. When I try to reason with the immediate past vice chancellor and incumbent and they didn’t see reason with us we went to court. So as we speak now we are in court with the school because they did terrible things there. They went as far as hijacking the account, changing the account name to a department in school. They change the signatories from our officers to staff of the school. It is in court already in suite number FHCAWCK2002/12”.

The National President also disclosed that the activities of the school authority towards the alumni have affected the alumni to a large extent. According to him, the Nnewi branch has virtually become dead because that was where the incumbent vice chancellor’s wife is a member.

Disclosing further, he said that Nnewi branch is dead because a lot of the association members there are staff of Nnamdi Azikiwe Teaching Hospital.

“So most of them are not eager to come forward and be part of what we are doing at the national level because the national as it were now is in court with the school. So anybody that fully identifies with us will be under threat”, he quipped.

“It is affecting and at the national level, of course it is affecting too because, let’s be honest with ourselves, if we are doing things to uplift the name of the school; if we are doing things to make those who attended the school go out, there are some other things we are entitled to. There are a lot of things that school could do to help the branches to be strong”.

Mrs Chinyere Anyaegbunam- Vice president of Lagos Chapter said the essence of the alumni was to help the upcoming graduates who are posted in Lagos State. She stated that the alumni were like networking and socializing instrument for the ex- students.

“We have plans and that is one of the things we want to unveil today to the publics and to the students of the university not only in Lagos but all over the world. The model is the concept of the association. The model comprises of secretariat that can cater for the welfare of our students posted in Lagos State and those living in Lagos state. So the mission is to move forward, to help achieve, to establish and then to keep moving forward”, she said.

“Some people have tried to come up with this association but it failed them. But with us on ground, we have decided to fight; it’s not an easy thing to make sure that what we are witnessing come to be. Well maybe those that started it before were not really push full as we are. I think it is the spirit to fight and conquer that brought us all here today”.

 According to Anyaegbunam, the alumni is building a building project in Lagos State, which was to be unveiled that day and said the alumni was on seed sowing.

“We are looking at N250, 000 million. That is why we are calling on all the ZIKITES all stakeholders, the governors, most especially the Lagos state governor and Anambra state governor to come to our aid and help us realize this dream”, She stated .

“It will because this is the first time this is happening all over Nigeria for such a project to start. It is a victory for all alumni all over the world and wherever they are, you know that you have a secretariat that houses and caters for the need and welfare of their ex students. We encourage the upcoming ones, anytime they are around and they have issues they can go there with their problem or to meet with the executives and if there is any issues they can sort it out”.

Honorable Don Ohakwe, member of the alumni, told Newswatch Times that Lagos Chapter of the alumni wants to place UNIZIK, in international map where it would be ranked among the high flying universities in Nigeria and the world at large. He said the alumni have a big project and with the caliber of members in the branch, they would be able to put such gigantic structure.

“You can see to yourself what is happening here today. We want to have UNIZIK alumnus that have very solid personalities. We want to build a structure in Lagos. This is the first time of such in Lagos state. UNIZIK alumni have businessmen, lawyers, and professionals as members, so, we are trying to build a very big structure to enable all our new members, so that when they come, we will able to accommodate them. We don’t where they would come and join bad gangs or become victims of rapists, armed robbers, criminals and these are the things we are trying to stop”, Ohakwe explained.

“We want to have a UNIZIK that is together. So many of our boys and girls are here, they decided not to come out because they think we are not together. So, this is the reason we want to come together. It started in my house in Festac, before we now moved to Surulere because there was no enough accommodation they said it is not central. Some people from Lekki, Ikoyi refused to come. Now that we are in central place is now national stadium Surulere, so many people are now coming together. Our budget is over N200million. The message is that UNIZIK is now together in Lagos.  UNIZIK alumni chapter in Lagos State we have now formed a formidable force that will achieve an objective role”.