USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigerian tertiary institutions and the poor publicity of their achievements

Nigerian tertiary institutions and the non-publicity of their achievements
By Abdussalam Amoo

A few days back, I was at a meet-up. One of the attendees would later
identify himself as a student at the Federal University of Technology,
Owerri (FUTO). With that, I congratulated him and his university on their
recent feat as being the best rated in Open Education Resources (OER)
in Nigeria. He was obviously getting to hear that for the first time.
It took some explanation for him to understand what that meant.

The OERs, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) are any type of educational materials
that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The
nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and
freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. Textbooks, curricula,
syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and
animation all constitute OERs.

Over the years, Nigeria (and by extension, the whole of West Africa)
has never been on the global OER map. It was in August, 2017 that the
National Universities Commission (NUC) under its incumbent leadership
announced and invited Nigerian universities to partake in its maiden
OER.


In what the NUC tagged Nigerian University System Open Education
Resources (NUSOER), it was to serve as repository for all open
education resources held by all universities in Nigeria. Fifty
universities across generations and types of ownership were ranked in
the inaugural phase of the project. You can read further about the
ranking at https://educeleb.com/futo-ranks-first-maiden-nuc-oer-ranking/.

When the fellow learnt that his university was ranked first, he asked
me if I meant that the school ranked above the University of Lagos
(UNILAG) and the University of Nigeria Nnsuka. It took him by
surprise. I'm not surprise at his surprise. It's as a result of the
non-publicity of the feat by the communications officials at FUTO.

A visit to the FUTO website at the time indicated that only admission
information and academic calendar is posted regularly. Such a feat
didn't worth being posted. By the way, UNILAG which ranked fourth on
the list celebrated this by touting itself as the first among first
generation universities in the NUC OER ranking.

The last time the handlers of the FUTO Twitter handle deemed it
necessary to tweet was in October, 2012. The last post on the
university's Facebook page was in November, 2017. Does that mean that
there have been no development in the university for public
consumption since then?

That university is not alone in that. Many of our tertiary
institutions have selling points which are less publicised. Students,
academics and alumni members are achieving great things which are not
being fully publicised to boost the image of their university. Recent
news about some institutions is limited to students or staff who
committed some crime. This shouldn't be so.

Our universities can attract more student admission, local and
international partnerships for development by the hype the owners give
the activities of their products. Some people are being paid for this
among the university staff. They need to rise to this responsibility
of theirs.

There are, of course, universities that celebrate every feat achieved
by their products. It doesn't end in just the person celebrating such
on their own. The Vice Chancellor would congratulate the achiever and
would ensure that such feats are given the appropriate publicity. Such
would not only be in the news but also on the university's website and
social media channels. When such universities hold convocation
ceremonies or anniversaries, such achievements would be mentioned.

A university like Crescent University, Abeokuta would go as far as
congratulating its products in advertorials on the pages of newspapers
for winning awards. In the process, it would invite parents to
register their wards as students in the school. Covenant University,
Ota would display the research efforts of its academics on its webpage
as visitors check on the university's website. UNILAG will always have
a lot of things to list as achievement based on the efforts of faculty
members and students at every convocation. These are because their
managers care about projecting the schools.

Another notable mention is the Lagos State University (LASU),
university with a battered image about three years ago. Issues of
cultism and civil unrest used to be alternative keywords in describing
that university at sometime in the past. Since a new leadership came
on board, much of that as changed.

The Yoruba would say that "You describe yourself by what's good". This
and, perhaps, actions of the Vice Chancellor, Professor Olanrewaju
Fagbohun had so far rebranded the school. Beyond the reformed
relationship between management, staff and students of the
institution, every good that a product of the university attains is
celebrated as a victory for the school. The VC would always address
students as "our worldclass students". The slogan "We are LASU, we are
proud" and others became resonating there as the management changed
public perception about the school with decisive action.

Other tertiary institutions can take a cue from these. The public
relations personnel of our schools should always track and project the
successes of their products. Just like the Nigerian government is
always rebranding, many of our schools need to rebrand too. You would
see headlines about Nigerians doing great elsewhere. It wouldn't be
bad if the media departments of these schools link these Nigerians'
achievement to their alma mata back home, where applicable.

Our institutions' websites should be regularly updated with more
information showcasing the achievements of faculty, student and alumni
members. Activeness on the social media is also necessary for our
schools in this digital age. Communication should go beyond the
physical meetings to the virtual versions. Our schools in Nigeria are
not the best but we can make the best out of them by how we project
them.



Abdussalam Amoo is the passionate about education. He blogs at EduCeleb.com.

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