University administrators across the South West Nigeria and Edo State have joined their counterparts in Elizade University for the 5th annual Registry lecture of the institution.
In a lecture entitled “Pathway to Overcoming Challenges of the Nigerian University System in the 21st Century: University Administrators and the Imperative of Value Addition,” a former Registrar of Ekiti State Universty, Dr Omojola Awosusi, undertook a global panoramic view of the university administration.
Dr. Awosusi called on Universities in Nigeria to migrate to digital technologies. He explained that such migration and investment in digital technologies would increase speed and quality of service.
Dr. Awosusi said universities in Nigeria should learn from the banking industry by adopting the use of Electronic Document Management System(EDMS), explaining that the “EDMS will warehouse all records in an institution, namely personnel records, students’ admission records, students’ examination results, minutes of all meetings, committee reports, etc.”
He enumerated some of the advantages of EDMS to include security, speed, neatness and retrieval: “old records acquired prior to the adoption of EDMS are expected to be scanned and stored electronically to create database for workflow.”
This, he explained, would increase the ease and speed of transactions. “We will easily overcome the challenges relating to tardiness, remote working, online deployment of teaching, etc.” For security and safety, Dr, Awosusi said, “Fire, flood, earthquake or any other natural disasters cannot obliterate records, especially when they are saved in the cloud”
The renowned University administrator expressed worries over cases where non-academic staff overwhelmingly outnumbered the academic staff in Universities, advising that “Excess staff should be re-trained for re-use in critical areas of the system…. The earlier this is done the better because certain jobs will soon become extinct when all the systems are fully digitized.”
He frowned at recruitment process in the University system, saying, “Giving appointments to people without interviews and background checks should stop forthwith. It takes a rigorous due process to determine potentially good administrators.”
Dr. Awosusi described University administrators as value creators which the system needed to overcome its challenges, such as governance, funding, political interference and instability in the academic calendar due to incessant industrial actions.
In a mark, the Vice Chancellor, Elizade University, Prof, Olukayode Amund, described the lecture as timely because it would generate ideas for solving myriad of problems confronting the University system.
Prof. Amund commended the Registry for coming up with the innovative idea.
In an address of welcome, the Registrar, Mr. Omololu Adegbenro, explained that the lecture was a means of knowledge acquisition. Recounting the insightful influence of the previous annual lectures, Mr. Adegbenro, said the series were part of the process of “getting our minds renewed professionally.”
A former Vice Chancellor of Redeemer’s University, Prof. Debo Adeyewa, who was the chairman of the occasion, described Elizade University as a model which other Universities could learn from.
Prof. Adeyewa commended the University for coming up with a great idea to sharpen the skills of University administrators.
The 2022 Registry annual lecture drew together the cream of members of the academia from within and outside Elizade University, and neighboring Universities, including Benin.
Dare Olorunfemi
Head, Public Relations Unit
01 January, 0001.