Corrupt public office holders are mad, says VC

The Vice Chancellor of Al Hikma University, Ilorin, Professor Taofeek Ibrahim has deplored the alleged high rate of corruption among some elected public office holders in Nigeria, noting that if the trend should persist it could lead to unprecedented poverty among majority Nigerians.

Presiding over the seventh Convocation, Vice Chancellor’s press briefing of the University yesterday in Ilorin, Ibrahim said any elected public office holder who corruptly enriched himself, thereby “amasing more wealth than he needed, must be closer to a mad man.”

“The indices of Nigeria have given us a sign of how our leaders are performing. We can assess them in several other sectors. We should however know that anyone who amased what he doesn’t need is mad.”

The Vice Chancellor, a Professor of Medicine said he would not recommend prior Psychiatric test for would be political office holder in the country but canvassed that political offices should be run on part time basis rather than its present full time basis with huge financial implications.

He noted, “The exorbitant running of Nigeria’s government should not continue at the peril of its citizenry’s massive poverty and the country’s under development. I necessarily wish to support the recent view of a very successful Nigerian businessman, and strongly so, that our National Assembly should be run on part time basis.

“Members should come from their various businesses or public sector, it should not be for people without jobs who has nothing doing and want to make easy money out of government and governance. “

Ibrahim while lamenting the high costs of driving a privately owned University in Nigeria urged the Federal Government to extend certain percentage of financial allocations being enjoyed by the federal owned Universities to the private ones, adding, “we are simply assisting the government in the area of provision of quality education.”

Besides, he advised the Nigerian University System and Academics, on the need to move out of research and publications for mere evidence of prowess in Scientific and literary writing, but move on to researches “with the ability to inform useful and practicable policies, life impacting technological innovations and development and the ability to identify and solve problems confronting the humanity.”

The University in this year convocation ceremony slated for Saturday September 30th this year, will graduate 916 students across various disciplines. The breakdown showed that 827 are undergraduates while 89 are postgraduates. A further breakdown disclosed that 16 came out with First Classes, 208 Second Class Upper, 434 Second Class Lower, 143 Third Class and 26 pass category.

The convocation lecture ‘Acrobatic Religiousity versus Paradoxical Criminality: Who did this to Nigeria’ will hold on Friday September 29 at the University campus. Professor Ishaq Lakin Akintola of the Lagos State University will deliver it.