The Danger of Appointing an Honorary Professor as a Vice Chancellor in Nigeria

An Honorary Professor is a professor who become Professor by appointment and not by assessment. Such a person do not know what it takes to become a Professor in any Nigeria university and as such has no regards to duly assessed professors. A person of such probably made himself a professor by the virtue of his appointment as Vice Chancellor of a state-owned university. Alternatively, it is also possible that as an appointed Chancellor Vice, he called his cronies to his office to assess him and brown envelops presented as gifts to the assessors. When such a person becomes a Vice Chancellor, there is tendency for such to look down on other professors. In fact, such an individual sees himself as an elephant and colleagues including his senior colleagues as ants whose size if they come together may not be up to the size of one of his legs. In order to cover up for his inadequacies, he shouts at anyone whose rank to become a professor followed due process of assessment at will and relieves anyone of his/her appointment who refused to be humiliated by letting him know that shouting is not part of his duty as a Vice Chancellor and that he has no right whatsoever to shout at him/her.

Not too long ago, Federal University of Technology, Owerri made someone an Honorary Professor of Cyber Security maybe because of his appointment as a Minister of Communication and Digital Economy. Honorary professors are dangerous to the academic community when they are appointed to head a university.

An Honorary Professor is known for his total disregard for the rules and regulations relating to the university where he presides over the day to day running of the system. He does not believe in Senate, Management and Council committees which is the bedrock of running a university system. To such a person, a semester expected to run for 15-17 weeks can even run for just 2-3 weeks, it does not make any difference, The word standard does not exist in his dictionary. In his dream, he assumes the status of a world class Vice Chancellor without corresponding standard in teaching and learning. Students under such a leader are quarter-baked as the graduate with little or no knowledge in their field of study. Students results in the portal developed by contractors brought by such Chief Executive Officer exist today and disappear tomorrow and prone to undue manipulation as the portal manager is located far away from the university’s location. Election to offices of Deans of Faculties does not make any meaning to an Honorary Professor who handles a federal university as his personal company where there is prerogative to hire without advert or follow any due process and fire without looking back. In other words, the act to fire and hire rest solely on him. To such Vice Chancellor, federal character is only for the faint hearted not for an elephant as he imagines himself to be. Such a person who sees himself as master and his colleagues as slaves deploys intimidation as administrative strategy where unions leaders and faculty members may be suspended without any consequence.

In order not to have a repeat of gross abuse of the Office of the Vice Chancellor, University of Abuja unlike a state university should support only internal candidates who are duly assessed to the rank of a professor and evidence of such exist and not those appointed to the rank by politicians who do not really care about university education in Nigeria.

By
Professor Okike Benjamin
Department of Computer Science,
University of Abuja