On Monday, President Bola Tinubu appointed John Oladapo Obafunwa, former vice chancellor of the Lagos State University (LASU) and a renowned forensic pathologist, as the new director-general of the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR).

But protesting students and staff under the three unions in the university detested him, once describing him as LASU’s “worst vice chancellor ever“. Obafunwa, who was VC between 2011 and 2015, has now explained why the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities (NASU) have such a dim view of him.

He spoke with FIJ’s JOSEPH ADEIYE from the US on Tuesday.

Describe your tenure as Vice Chancellor of LASU.

There are certain principles I believe in and my profession has further humbled me. When you see bodies on the table in the autopsy room, you know that we don’t have any powers.

Before I went to Ojo (LASU Main Campus), I was provost of the medical school. Go to Ikeja. Go to the medical school. I can beat my chest and say that 90% of the developments in the place, I did it by God’s grace.

I was opportune to have people around me who believed in me and gave me the opportunity to do those things. I had a good commissioner for health, I had a good permanent secretary. When I first started as the provost, President Tinubu was the governor of Lagos State.

I was just lucky to have people in the right places to provide the support I needed. By the time I finished my tenure, I was happy with myself and I went back to my department as a floor member.

I didn’t want to apply to be VC, but there was some pressure from certain quarters for me to apply and I applied.

I became the VC. Babatunde Fashola was the governor of Lagos at that time. The situation in Ojo was different from that in Ikeja in terms of people’s attitude, their mindset and their level of commitment.

I want to shy away from saying that those in the medical school were even more refined than those on the Ojo campus.

When I got to Ojo, I started to see strange things. Examination results were not coming out; there were students who had been in school for eight years but they were stuck in their third academic year; 400-Level students could not find their 100-Level results. Some lecturers were holding on to some results and some were involved in examination malpractice.

Unfortunately, some students were involved in the malpractice too. Some of the class governors acted as intermediaries between the lecturers and the students in those cases.

Then there was admission racketeering and selling of handouts, and so on. I wiped all of this out and I confronted the system.

There were numerous crises during your tenure. Explain what you understood ASUU, SSANU and the non-academic staff union wanted from you.

In the external system, all those other campuses, I discovered that there were no records inside LASU. All those external campuses were like a franchise.

I asked to see the database of our students and we saw nothing. Of course, I told some of the people in charge of those campuses not to think of coming to see me privately.

Before I became VC, I knew about the external system issue because I was on the previous governing council. So I knew what I had to do there when I got in.

We found that some of the part-time lecturers were not qualified to be employed. I also stopped irregular payments, I don’t want to mention the names of the people involved.

That was why ASUU in LASU then was making a lot of noise. Most of the lecturers were connected somehow and related to one another.

As I tried to fix problems and sanction staff, we had members of the disciplinary committee going behind to speak with the people we were investigating. We would be investigating a staff and they would in turn instigate the students to turn on the school’s administration.

There were cases of examination malpractice where the previous administration had swept under the carpet. I was bold enough to bring up those cases, about 1,800 students over the years. We got them to the disciplinary committee over the years.

I faced an assassination attempt by a student because of this examination malpractice issue. It happened around the Shoprite area in Ikeja. I called the retired AIG Odumosu, who was then the RRS head, to escort me to the airport because I was leaving the country that day.

Nobody can say that Obafunwa stole one kobo in LASU. I tried to get money from TETFUND, from the Federal Ministry of Education, and the unions were trying to block it at that time. I had said no; nobody would touch a kobo from that money.

The point was that I was not going to compromise on anything. Ask all those lecturers who were agitating if Obafunwa stole one kobo. Let them bring out the information. They cannot.

There was a lot of corruption in the system, I was never used to it and I had to confront it. If people who succeeded me decide to be doing paparazzi and doling out money, that’s their business.

I did not expect students to be happy with me for clamping down on exam malpractice neither did I expect academics to be happy that I blocked their avenues to make money.

When we look back at the news on LASU during your tenure, there are many accusations but little defence from you. Why did you fail to counter those claims?

All the negative reports against me were sponsored by the union. They were funded even by the national ASUU.

I cannot be bothered. I don’t have money to give journalists to write anything in my favour. In my time, I told the journalists to go and write whatever they wanted to write but they should not expect any funds from me. That was how things were done then.

Some former LASU students have said they were cross with you because you approved school fee increase, not because they were related to bad staff. You increased school fees from N25,000 to about N200,000. Why did you make such a drastic hike happen?

This is all part of the misinformation by ASUU and their supporters.

I became vice chancellor on the 1st of November, 2011. Before my becoming vice chancellor, there was a committee that reviewed the school fees in LASU and submitted a report through the governing council to the state government.

In fact, I can authoritatively tell you that the current vice chancellor of LASU and the current vice chancellor of LASUSTECH at Ikorodu were members of that committee. Government had already approved the new school fees.

I only came in as VC, and it was given to me to implement. It was not me. The decision to increase school fees had been taken well before I became the vice chancellor, but ASUU got the students to complain about Obafunwa increasing the school fees.

Tell us more about the enemy within. Professor Fagbohun, your successor, made a name for himself by sacking wayward lecturers and corrupt staff. Did you sack many of those you caught as LASU VC?

I am not sure Fagbohun would say that he inherited such baggage from me. No. If anything, I stood to fight against these problems.

When I left the vice chancellor role, there was an attempt to parley with the union in order to achieve stability. When they [succeeding vice chancellor] discovered that the unions were very dirty and was going to completely take over from them, that was when they decided to confront them.

That was why people started fighting again, the Ninalowo governing council and the Fagbohun administration.

Sexual harassment, I confronted it. There was a lot of cultism within the system that I had to confront with Captain Adeyinka, the chief security officer. We had some lecturers who were part and parcel of the cult system too.

Crises started when the Idris committee of ASUU-LASU took over in my time. I can tell you that one of my deputy vice chancellors was the one who brought Idris into LASU through the backdoor. I discovered this later on. I won’t mention the name, but that person was my deputy vice chancellor. This same person wanted me to help get a portion of TETFUND money and we had a falling-out.

A vice chancellor cannot hire and fire staff, even academic staff. I could not fire these people on my own. I had to get the governing council to agree before that could be done.

When you don’t have that support, you get stuck.

After LASU, did you look back at the bigger picture and ever think you could have done some things better?

I had some dedicated people who worked with me. Maybe I could have paid more attention to the media department or the communications department. I still won’t throw money around.

Perhaps, I would have to do this differently. I am not a paparazzi person. To show what I am doing or to flaunt good deeds, we have to invite journalists and maybe organise a reception with money shared. I am conservative to a large extent.