Women Academics From Nigeria

"When the world of people know what you stand for, your life becomes easier. When you stand for God there is a price to pay. You can work among corrupt people and not be corrupted."

"Women in leadership need to be prepared for challenges. Also, other women in leadership need to mentor younger women so as to prepare them for leadership. Leadership is not easy for a woman."

"We must address the socialisation process that gives less worth to the girl-child. Our society from birth has conferred a subordinate role on the girl-child. We must also address equity more than equality. This will provide a ladder for women to succeed."

"There were lots of challenges. There were days when I didn’t have money; days when my school fees were delayed. I didn’t have a lot of things that my mates had but I knew I was going to have them one day as I knew that with God on my side, I was going to work hard and ensure that those things I didn’t have then, I could have them when working so I got stuck to school."

"We can make Education more attractive through our application of technology and Information Communication Technology in the learning curricula."

"You know when the hand shake is going beyond the elbow between a person in position of authority and a person at a lower position and it has sexual motive, that is sexual harassment."

"In some rural areas, parents withdraw girls from schools when they reach a certain age because they are afraid they will have to have relations with teachers."

"We are going to take punitive measures against these teachers and give a voice to students."

"There can’t be remarkable improvement in change in attitudinal behaviour of the people without education. Education is an effective instrument for positive change."

"The world is a global village, the methodology of teaching and learning has become so diverse that we must also look deeply at the diversification of the teaching and learning model in and around the world."

"Building resilient foundations means the preparedness to reduce risk, uncertainties and vulnerabilities that arise from construction project challenges which constraints the construction process."

"If you don’t train and retrain teachers, education will continue to be comatose; students will continue to fail woefully and development may not be possible."

"A nation with a large number of uneducated citizens cannot develop. Education is the foundation for development."

"Sexual harassment is a no go area for both the students and lecturers of this noble institution. We will not tolerate such attitude. We will not in any way cooperate with the harassers and we are going to make sure that we invoke all regulations in the university against sexual harassment."

"Teachers should be trained and retrained. This should be done regularly. If teachers who are key factors in schools are left out, then we should not expect that pupils would perform very well."

"She worked so hard when she was the deputy vice chancellor during my tenure as vice chancellor, and I am happy that her ex-students appreciate her contributions to their development."

"A scholar par excellence, mentor, administrator and mother."

"Of course, I faced opposition. The first time I ran (for the office), I lost by a few votes because I ran against a man. During the campaign, because I had to go round the faculties and talk to individuals, people asked me who would look after my home if I became the DVC and were in top management."

"I was ready for retirement. I loved the job, the students and liked interacting with them, though they may have said other things. I loved challenging them to be their best. Before retirement came, I was mentally prepared for it. I had also managed my resources carefully so that it would not be a major shock financially."

"I am happy that some of my former students are also professors now."

"In fact, she is a woman of many firsts, including being the first professor of children’s literature, and the first female deputy vice chancellor."

"Discipline was a major thing in our home, especially from my mum; she just didn’t take any nonsense. She was a loving person but liked people to be punctual, do whatever was assigned to them on time and without excuses. I think that must have rubbed off on my siblings and me."

"For many years we have agitated for adequate representation at all tiers of government. The figures are depressing. In 2011, only 9 women senators were representing 54 million women in Nigeria; the immediate past President, Goodluck Jonathan appointed women to 33 per cent of cabinet positions, up from 10 per cent in President Obasanjo’s government. Now, under the current government, women’s representation has gone down further and both verbal pronouncements and the body language of our leaders indicate a lessening of the importance of the critical roles of women to the growth and health of our country."

"We should aim to become strategic and effective within those roles and thus raise the profiles of women as did Nigeria’s first crop of western female educated activists like Margaret Ekpo, Olufunmilayo Ransome Kuti, Wuraola Esan, and grassroots mobiliser , Sambo Sawaba."

"I think it’s also important to show that it doesn’t have to be a male terrain completely, if there are competent women, we should give them positions on merit. But don’t look down on somebody and say, she is a woman, she can’t do it or he’s a man, he can’t do it. That would be a wrong attitude."

"Her achievements are significant by all standards, and her simple approach to life is what draws many people to her."

"Well, becoming a professor, yes. Because if you joined the academic staff in the university, you’ll be looking forward to becoming a professor but the Deputy Vice-Chancellor thing, it wasn’t on my mind at all."

"I was dealing with the entire community with a wider forum; I think people liked the way I went about things."

"There is the notion that women are not supposed to be in the public sphere. Basically, they are supposed to be in the private space, looking after their children, being in the kitchen and so on. So, the whole idea is that women are not supposed to be in the limelight; they are to be seen and not to be heard."

"I started in 1965 as astudent and that was nice, it was enjoyable, the facilities were okay and we enjoyed the attention of our lecturers, you know, we had very small classes and we interacted with them, they kept note of us, they knew what we were doing. I mean there was no lecturer who didn’t know who and who were in the groups. And I graduated in 1968 with a BA in English at that time, 2nd Class Upper Division, the only one in the class that year."

"The scope of the agreement covers students exchange, Faculty staff exchange programmes for teaching and research, conferences and workshops, exchange of academic programme materials, joint distance learning and research and publication."

"As DVC academic, I chaired over 25 committees and I didn’t have any major issue. So, I think it’s a question of one’s personality, one’s management style and as I said, I have been in university for quite some time. So, I have paid my dues."

"The convocation will be proceeded by a pre-convocation lecture on Friday, March 02, 2018 by pm at the GST Auditorium at the permanent site of the institution by the former minister of Education professor Ruqqayyatu Ahmed Rufai."

"BUK is like father and mother to this institution, because we have receiving a lot of assistance from there, in terms of staffing. The vice chancellor there is always willing to let go of his staff to come and assist us to establish this university, because he knows that we need experienced staff and whenever we go there for even financial assistance, he renders."

"For instance, during the pre-NUGA games, we went there for assistance and he assisted us in cash and kind, because we used some of their sports gears. Also, during our convocation, he assisted, so whenever we go to BUK for assistance, they are always ready to oblige us. For this, we remain eternally appreciative of the kind of father-figure role they play for this university."

"I never wavered for one minute about whether I was in the right position or not, because right from when I was young, I knew that I wanted to be a teacher, but I didn’t know that I would be a university teacher. The people that inspired me at that time were the young ladies that came from the UCI, University College, Ibadan then on vacation job in my school in Yejide Girls Grammar School. You know, they came to teach us during the long vacation, this was in the 60s. And, I was so impressed with the way they carried themselves, the way they taught us. Some of our teachers were early graduates of UCI, so I just knew that was what I wanted to do and I knew I was going to teach English."

"But in the other components, which TETFund intervenes, if you go through the campus, you will discover that most of the structures on ground carry the label of TETFund, showing that without TETFund, this university would not have been anywhere or grown as it is now. So, we can attribute the success of the university to TETFund intervention."

"So, majority of the students live outside the campus. Most parents don’t like their daughters to be outside the campus, but there is nothing we can do about it."

"By September, we are going to admit a new set of students and new session would commence, but we don’t have places to accommodate them, because hostels are capital-intensive projects and are yet to be completed.Unless we get the funds to complete the two hostels, there will be a big problem. Inadequate office accommodation and lecture rooms are also major challenges. Because of the increasing population, you have to recruit and increase programmes and offices are not available."

"For a new university like ours to have a population of about 25,000 students in only five years of its establishment, I think it is very big and it is a big challenge accommodating the students."

"I found it so absorbing, I love reading, it came easy to me."

"Although Professor Emerita Odejide retired in 2011, but she continued supervising students in her department – Communication and Language Arts."

"We sympathise with the students, who need a path to walk to the classrooms, library, clinic, everywhere that gets flooded. We see this as a major challenge in the university."

"Secondly, we have a challenge of accommodation. The university started on a temporary campus and now, we only have one hostel each for the males and females, and the university is growing rapidly."

"TETFund does not go into hostel and road construction on campuses. So, these two major challenges are out and have to be the responsibility of the Federal Government to provide."

"But despite that, there are numerous challenges. One, you can see that there are some uncompleted structures that are actually capital intensive. We don’t even have a single road network in the university and there is also the problem of drainage, such that during the rainy season, the university gets extremely flooded and people find it difficult to navigate through the campus with vehicles, not to talk of walking on foot."

"The university had signed MoU’s with a number of foreign universities and scholarly centres, including the University of North Dakota, Morgan University, and the International Islamic University of Kelantan."

"For the first time since the creation of the university in 2011, it is graduating 281 post graduate students, the development as a thing of pride and a first from among its nine peers."

"FUD will offer employment to the deserving student as a mark of appreciation of his ‎efforts."

"I thanked TETFund for providing the necessary funding to execute noble projects in the school. They have gone a long way in accelerating our development to the level we are today and securing of accreditation of the programmes from the National Universities Commission (NUC)."