THE immediate past Vice Chancellor of University of Ilorin, Professor Ishaq Oloyede has lauded the recent statement credited to the Minister of Education, Professor Ruqqayat Rufai on the need to hold any Vice Chancellor who allowed outbreak of violence on his campus responsible.

Oloyede, while handing over to his successor, Professor Abdulganiyu Ambali at a colourful event, said any Vice Chancellor who could not protect his students should consider himself a misfit for the exalted office.

Besides, Oloyede sharply criticized the National Assembly for reducing from 10 years to five the tenure of some principal officials of the nation's Universities especially the registrars and the bursars, noting that the decision apart from robbing the system of the needed experience, would equally render the concerned officers redundant at the expiration of their tenure of offices.

His words: "I have the duty to protect lives on the campus, it is one of the primary duties I have as the Vice Chancellor. We all appreciate the statement of the Minister for Education, it is a good speech.

"The Vice Chancellor who loves himself dearly should sit up and do the right thing in the area of security."

Reacting to a question on whether the tenure of office of the Vice chancellor should be extended beyond its present five years of a single term, the ex Vice chancellor said the enormity of the job would not make any Vice Chancellor who worked out his heart for the University to be interested in returning into the office under the guise of tenure elongation.

According to him, "I don't think any Vice Chancellor who loves himself will not want a second term. His body will reject it unless he had not done well enough in office. But I think the National Assembly made a mistake with the tenure of the Registrars and the Bursars. In my own case, it will be a pleasure for me to return to the class room after my tenure as the Vice Chancellor, but where do you want the Registrar and the Bursar to go? That of the Librarian is understandable because he has the papers that could make him a professor before his appointment as the Librarian.

"If you want the Registrar and the Bursar to go after five years, where are you sending them to? I think the National Assembly was misled and ill advised in taking that stand as that decision will not be in the best interest of the University system.

These are two key positions within the system that required experienced hands at all times."

For Oloyede the number of the existing Universities in Nigeria when multiplied would not be enough for qualified Nigerians yearly yearning for admissions into them. He canvassed a diversification into vocational training where the products would not just be job creators but help in solving high rate of unemployment in the country.

"Qualified candidates for University are so many that if you double the number we are having today, they will not assist in solving the spatial problem at hand. I think we need to start looking in the direction of vocational training institutes as a way out. But despite this proposition, kudos must be given to the existing Federal Universities, 36 in all, for employing more than the 100 private Universities around."

He praised the leadership of unions at the University of Ilorin for preferring more of proactive way of unionism to table banging method, noting that the preference remained one of the success stories of his administration.

For the successor of Oloyede a Professor of Veterinary Medicine, he would try to up hold the legacies of successive past Vice Chancellors of the institution towards making the University not only the best in Nigeria but one of the world best.

The University with students' population of 29,576 graduated a total 5,556 undergraduate students. The breakdown showed that 37 of them had First Class, 988 Second Class Upper Division, 2,746 Lower Division, 1,234 Third Class, 310 Pass, 61 Diploma and 180 MB;BS graduands.

At the post graduate level, the University produced 1069 graduands out of which 83 are Ph.D, 562 are Master's 23 are MPH, 246 are MBA/MPA/MILR/MIS/MGIS and 155 are Diploma/Certificate graduands.

A remarkable feature of the statistics is that apart from producing the highest number of First Class graduands so far, the University also produced the highest number of Ph.D degrees so far during the session under review.