The first major achievement of the Diepreye Alamieyeseigha administration was the establishment of the Niger Delta University (NDU). The governor considered it a priority for the state to host a home-grown tertiary institution, to groom the potential of the youth from the start, and project Bayelsa into that comity of states which could boast of equal feat. To feed that university, he also established the state College of Arts and Science.
Alamieyeseigha had cause to recount the story of both institutions when he was conferred with an Honourary Doctorate Degree in Public Administration at the 14th convocation ceremony of NDU, Amassoma, on Saturday, 25 April 2015. It was like receiving the crowning glory for a dream he had fostered from the infancy of his government.
Students in their graduation hoods and gowns had lined up that morning, faculty by faculty, their visitors surrounding them with laughter and so much cheer. A new chapter was opening in the lives of the students. They would receive their scrolls of knowledge, one after the other, and proceed to prove themselves as products of Bayelsa’s premier university. And the story would not be complete until the name of Alamieyeseigha, the governor who established the university, was repeated.
The Governor-General himself stood up that day, and was duly decorated with honour and adorned with his unique robe as a torch-bearer of enlightenment in the Niger Delta. As may be expected, he was suitably overwhelmed to receive an honourary doctorate degree in Public Administration from a university he established.
It was an eventuality he did not quite foresee, even if he did foresee the imperative of establishing a university that answered to that description at the dawn of democracy, 15 years to that moment. This was as good an occasion as any to refresh the public memory about the early days of the university.
But first, acting on behalf of his fellow recipients, Alamieyeseigha expressed appreciation to the Governing Council of the university for considering it worthwhile to invest the honour upon them. For him in particular, it was even more significant, because his investiture went all the way to prove that a prophet can indeed receive a mantle of honour in his own homeland.
Only 10 days before, on 15 April 2015, news of the death of Oronto Douglas had broken, and a pall of grief was still palpable around Bayelsa. Alamieyeseigha acknowledged the lifetime contributions of the young man who served in his government, whose passion for the growth of the university was as vibrant as his demonstrable love for the Niger Delta and its people.
Oronto Douglas had served as Commissioner for Information in the Alamieyeseigha government, had been retained by the successive government of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, and was elevated to the office of Special Adviser on Research and Documentation when Jonathan emerged as Nigeria’s President. Oronto had endured a terminal illness all the while, and memories of him were still fresh in mind.
One minute of silence was not enough to honour Oronto, but Alamieyeseigha called on that entire assembly to rise and observe that meaningful minute for a cardinal figure in the struggle for resource control and self-determination in the heydays of his government. Alamieyeseigha then launched into a short narration of his exploits as governor in the early days of Bayelsa, and the dilemmas confronting his government at the time.
‘When I came into office as governor in May 1999’, he began, ‘Bayelsa State was near ungovernable. Our advent coincided with the famous Kaiama Declaration which Oronto himself helped to compose. Militancy and piracy were at their peak. You dared not walk the streets of Yenagoa too freely after dark. Even the military government of the day was intimidated by the sheer restiveness of the new breed of militants. On assumption of office, therefore, I made a quick appreciation of problems in the state, and discovered that about 95 percent of the militants and their followers were school drop-outs. They didn’t have five credits to take them to higher institutions’.
To encourage young boys and girls rectify their deficiencies, therefore, the government promptly established the Bayelsa State College of Arts and Science (BYCAS). The first in-take was five thousand students, and the crime rate dropped miraculously. The government went further to establish the School of Nursing, Tombia, and the School of Health Technology, Otuogidi, to complement each other in providing qualified health personnel for the state.
Inevitably, many youths were attracted by the prospect of making a headway in life, and peace returned to the state. Alamieyeseigha also increased the civil service population from 4,500 as inherited from the military to 25,500 in a bid to mop up young men and women roaming the streets with nothing to do.
Not that he needed that number of civil servants at all, but at that time, it was expedient. It was a mark of social responsibility. That was how peace, stability and security were restored around the state. The government also embarked on an aggressive drive to grant scholarships to deserving Bayelsa students all over the world.
The focus was that they would study specific courses that would bring comparative advantage to the young state with regard to agriculture, engineering and medicine. It equally dawned on Alamieyeseigha that if fresh students from BYCAS were to graduate every year, they would have to be in a befitting setting where their career prospects would prosper and find fulfillment.
Clearly, no university outside the catchment area would absorb that number of students. Government was obliged, therefore, to establish the first tertiary institution in Ijaw land. The Federal Government of the day under Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was not well disposed to NDU. It was categorical in declaring that it would not approve any more state universities around the country.
But Alamieyeseigha maintained that he would affiliate it to a foreign university, if the Nigeria University Commission (NUC) did not recognise the institution. He reached out to some of the best universities around the world, and they were willing to enter into partnership with the state government. The governor promptly set up a technical committee drawn from the academia with Prof. E. J. Alagoa as chairman and Prof. John Buseri as secretary.
In the end, Buseri became the first Vice Chancellor to midwife the NDU. To start with, the committee recommended eleven faculties and prevailed on Alamieyeseigha to accept that universities which started on a small scale always found it difficult to grow. He had no choice but to bow to superior argument. The appropriate location for the university also generated a very robust and vigorous debate in the state executive council.
Alamieyeseigha said: ‘We reasoned that Wilberforce Island was central to the state, and quite rightly too. For that reason, Amassoma was picked among other communities around the island. It was the largest parcel of land for such a venture, and it was guaranteed to accommodate the population of students, given the required facilities’.
The executive council in question was made up of men and women of very high intellect, practically drawn from the Ivory Tower, the breeding ground for ideas. Alamieyeseigha appointed professors and doctors and technocrats into his cabinet, in the belief that the decision making process, and the policy formulation apparatus in the state, would be propelled by lively debates and well considered opinions. Not surprisingly, reputable dons like Prof. Telimoye Oguara, Commissioner for Works, and Prof. Palmer Johnny, Commissioner for Education, were good examples. Eventually, the Federal Government recognized the university, and so did the NUC.
‘I must confess, however, that I made some mistakes. That much was obvious to me in appointing some principal officers of the university. The first challenge was the appointment of Professor Nelson Brambaifa as Dean, Faculty of Medical Sciences. He is a professor of Pharmacology. I was not familiar with the convention that the head of a medical school must be a doctor, not a pharmacologist. Even so, Professor Brambaifa offered commendable services and provided the broad base upon which that faculty built its distinctive reputation’. Alamieyeseigha admitted
The second oversight was the appointment of the Vice Chancellor. It soon became clear that Buseri could not attract senior academics to the university because he was a relatively junior professor. As may be expected, accreditation became a problem. The government had to take a drastic decision to replace both pioneers, including the Registrar. Alamieyeseigha prevailed on the Governing Council to recruit a very senior professor of Niger Delta stock from the University of Ibadan.
That was how Prof. Chris Ikporukpo became Vice Chancellor, and Mr. David Suowari joined him from the University of Port Harcourt as Registrar. Also invited was Prof. Obuoforibo, a world renowned health consultant, to head the Medical School. With that, the composition, character and reputation of the university changed for the better, and remained so until Alamieyeseigha left office.
In a nutshell, that was how NDU came into being. So many names were suggested, but in the end, government settled for Niger Delta University. It was a more embracing bracket, since it would serve the yearnings and aspirations of the Niger Delta people, and especially because of its prime place as the first university in Ijaw land, conceived to satisfy the academic needs of the Ijaw people. An executive bill emanating from the office of the governor, pressing for the establishment of the NDU, was sent to the Bayelsa State House of Assembly, and it was passed into law in 2000.
Since the medical school was not well equipped at the time, Alamieyeseigha had to send all the first year students on scholarship to Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Thankfully, many of them completed their studies, earned their degrees, and returned to share their knowledge and experience in the land of their birth. A good number of them became lecturers in the same university that bred them, and they rose as one to cheer Alamieyeseigha that day.
‘I have no doubt that every stakeholder of this university, from the Pro-Chancellor to the porter, from individual members of the Governing Council to the Senate, from the Vice Chancellor, through the parade of lecturers to the overall body of students, that everyone will continue to root for goodwill and service which constitute the foundation pillars of the Niger Delta University’, said Alamieyeseigha.
What’s more, he could not help but acknowledge the efforts of Prof. Ongoebi Etebu, the first female Mechanical Engineer in all of Nigeria, who served as Commissioner for Special Projects at the time. She practically had to relocate from Yenagoa to Amassoma to oversee progress of work at the university directly. He equally appreciated the commitment of Architect Reuben Okoya who did the initial designs for many of the structures on site.
Out of sheer determination and courage, these noble citizens of the state supervised the movement of construction materials by boat in those early days when there was no road to Amassoma. In fact, the first crop of lecturers and students had to commute by boat from Yenagoa to Amassoma for lectures in the morning, and return by nightfall.
Today, the seed of an idea that was planted in 2000 has grown into a solid and gigantic tree holding its respectable place in the open grounds of scholarship. Till his last day, Alamieyeseigha identified with the dreams and aspirations of NDU in much the same way that a loving father would dote over a beloved child.
Like an indulgent father, he uttered fervent prayers for the all-round growth and development envisioned for Bayelsa State to materialise from this fertile nursery of ideas, this crucible of knowledge that had come to stay and be recognised as the Niger Delta University. From that day, having been named as a Doctor of Public Administration by the university on account of his humble contributions to its establishment, Alamieyeseigha gladly went by his new title, and never failed to add Ph.D to his name.
His final call for students and lecturers alike was to grow in strength and in knowledge, in character and in learning, so that they would serve to change the fortunes of the larger society for good, and have cause to glorify God.
