A distinguished economist, Prof. Peter Egbon, recently retired from Delta State University (DELSU), Abraka. In this insightful conversation with IFEANYI UWAGWU, he reflects on his journey into the academia, life as a septuagenarian and delved into pressing national issues, including removal of fuel subsidy and challenges within the university community, among others. Excerpts…
Let us meet you…
I’m Prof. Peter Chukwuyem Egbon, now retired from the tenured service of Delta State University Abraka after attaining 70 years mandatory retirement age. I have been a professor of economics since 1998; about 27 years now, as a tenured professor.
You have a twin event coming up; retirement and birthday. Tell us, what is life like at 70?
Not anything in particular, except, of course, that when I was younger, I used to make decisions before thinking about the implications. Now, I think about the implications of what I want to do, and therefore I find myself not making hasty decisions. I think that is about the only thing; otherwise, it is life as usual.
You have served meritoriously in various capacities, both in the ivory tower and in other spheres of life. As a retired professor, what has the journey been like?
I wouldn’t know where to start. However, nobody’s journey is fully smooth. I remember starting primary school relatively early. In those days, you have to be about seven years old, with your hand getting to your ear. But I never went through all those things. My father had a supermarket then, and teachers at one of the primary schools there used to come around. I found myself wanting to go to school with them. So they took me along, just to keep me there in the classroom. But somehow, I followed them, and during exams, they found me doing well. Hence, they reluctantly registered me. So, I started earlier than my peers.
Unfortunately, during the middle of my journey through primary school, my father’s business collapsed. So, while I will say I grew up with a silver spoon, in the middle of primary school, I did not know the colour of the spoon (laughs). The result was that when I finished my primary school education in 1965, I should have proceeded straight to secondary school, but there was no money to continue. I found myself starting secondary school in 1968, not because I was not intelligent enough to be there, but because there was no money.
In 1967, I would have been able to gain admission into Edo College, but the Civil War drove us from Benin to this place. With the result from Edo College, I entered Ika Grammar School to begin my secondary school. I remember going to Ika Grammar School with my mother’s Clark Sandals, otherwise, I would have been attending school barefooted. So, in a way, I found myself not being certain about going to secondary school. It was as bad as that, but as God will have it, finally, I surpassed that, even got to HSC, got my A levels.
You initially studied Electrical Engineering at Auchi Polytechnic but later switched to Economics. What influenced this significant career shift?
After my HSC, I got a job with the then Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) in the engineering division as an Assistant Technical Officer, and we were in training for six months. Thereafter, they sent us to the NBC Training School, where we were exposed to electrical electronics. It was a six-month program, and thereafter, I came back as a full-fledged Assistant Technical Officer, but my mind was not there.
Ordinarily, by my certificate and the topics I did at my A levels, I should be studying medicine. So the engineering that we had been involved a lot of talking, and I don’t like talking. When we were at the NBC engineering division, we even had the opportunity to continue science, but I could not do that because our program was based on shifts, and A Level science will require you to go to the lab and all that, and I did not have the time. I then put it for the social sciences. Luckily, I was able to study and occasionally attend lectures; that’s how I found myself at the University of Lagos (UNILAG).
After three years at UNILAG, due to direct entry, I went for mandatory service at Sokoto. My Primary Place of Assignment (PPA) was then Usman Dan Fodio University, Sokoto.
After earning your first degree, you took up teaching at Ika Grammar School and later became a part-time lecturer at the then College of Education, Agbor. What motivated your transition?
After my Service, I came back and wanted to continue with my Master’s Degree then, but for one reason or the other, I couldn’t go. So I found myself in the teaching service. I was posted to Ekuku-Agbor Secondary School.
On the day I got there, I met them holding a meeting, and after introducing myself, the principal asked me to sit by him, as I was next to him, as a Vice Principal. But I told myself, without announcing it, that it was not my kind of life. I have not started, and I am becoming a vice principal. That would blunt my ambitions, and besides, I was relatively young then, and I could see that I may be a centre for attraction.
So I never went back there again. I went back to teaching service and long story short, I found myself in Ika Grammar School, my alma-mater. While teaching there, they opened the College of Education Agbor, and I found that I will be better utilised there because my area of economics is mathematical, the quantitative aspect.
I was doing part-time with the College of Education then, but after that, I felt I should go for my Master’s, hence I found myself at the University of Ibadan (UI). I had already resigned from the Teaching Service Board when the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) went on strike. Ordinary, if I didn’t resign, I could have continued my teaching and gotten some money, but I couldn’t do that. So that’s how I finally left UI. I stayed at home for some months before getting employment at the then Bendel State University where I stayed for some time.
That was where I started from as an Assistant Lecturer, rose through the ranks, consulted for some international organisations, including the World Bank, for years, and even became an activist, joining up with ASUU and holding several positions within the union; rising from secretary to chairman, under the military regime and later I found myself at DELSU.
Why did you choose to leave the World Bank and return to Delta State University?
At the time I got that job, I was a senior lecturer, being assessed for Reader, which is the same as Associate Professor. So, I was there when I finally got the Assistant Professor position. When I went in initially, I went there on a sabbatical, and my sabbatical was supposed to be one year. However, when I got there, I found that it was not something I would stay for just one year, particularly when the money they were paying as Senior Lecturer was nothing to go by, and you expect me, therefore, not to want to come back immediately.
I came back to tell the Vice Chancellor then at Ekpoma, that I would rather want to stay back or resign so I can continue the consulting job. The VC, who is late now, then told me that the experience I’m going to gather there will be of benefit to the University. So, we had an agreement that I would occasionally come in to teach the graduate students. I did that without even having to be paid for anything because I saw that as my contribution to the university. After about five years with UNDP, I felt it was time to go because ordinarily, I was already qualified to be a Professor, and I felt that it would not be nice for me to get almost there and not have it.
Secondly, my wife and my children were alone, and they were all females. I did not see how I would leave her with the children to grow up because I was now to even leave that place and head to East Africa to go and manage similar institutions abroad. I felt that would mean gaining the whole world and losing my life. I felt I should come back. When I came back, some of my in-laws told my wife that something must be wrong with my head to leave a job where I could conveniently give somebody N50,000 in a month to one where I was coming to receive less than N10,000 per month. Professors were getting less than N10,000, which means I will get less than N10,000. It was a very hard decision to take, but I had to.
How did you navigate the turbulent political climate as a union leader?
I would like to remind you of the background that somehow I was forced to join at that time by the chairman and the secretary. The chairman was the type who liked writing and talking a lot, and he had a PhD, and the Vice Chancellor then would want to intimidate him. When he wants to say, ‘book an appointment with him’, he will say, ‘go and obtain your PhD’; it becomes a liability to us. Later, they said I should become the secretary because, you know, I don’t have time to talk much. I just go to the point and summarize. Later, when the chairman fumbled and became a liability, I was elected chairman.
People were asking how I would perform when I hardly talk. Those days I when I leave school, I go straight to my house. You don’t find me in any bar, beer parlour or whatever and for a person heading a union, it would be terrible because if you socialize, people can see that you can easily be compromised. I rarely stepped on toes for the benefit of my members. It is also required that before they take you seriously, you have to take yourself seriously.
I remember one occasion when I was to get a car loan. Previously, when chairmen get there, they are accorded that privilege and they get car loans, even when other members are not getting them, they have gotten their own. So when I got there, they felt it was as usual, that I would ask for mine, even if my people were not getting it was their headache. As I got there, they asked, ‘Chairman, which of the cars do you want? Brand new Peugeot 504, SRO’, so they would advance the money. I asked if it was my turn yet, and they told me it was not what my predecessors did, that if I waited for my turn, the money might be exhausted. In the end, I had to borrow money to buy a second-hand Passat, when ordinarily, I should have gotten a brand new 404 or 504, air-conditioned, but I had to look for money, about N11,000 to get something for myself. That was one of the sacrifices I made.
On other occasions, when the military would want to arrest me, they would go to the VC to ask for my whereabouts because I was not living in the staff quarters, and because I was also instrumental in his emergence as the VC, he always told them he doesn’t know where I stayed. Otherwise, they would have carried me while I was sleeping. That was one of the ways I have had my goodwill help me. The important thing is that I tried to carry everybody along without necessarily allowing power to go to my head.
Another occasion was when I went to the Edo State House of Assembly. The university had money, N2 million at that time, from the European Union then, to dam a river there so that they could get water. If you know the Eshan area well, you would know water is a problem there. But they diverted the money, and there was a problem. The then Vice Chancellor decided to make me Chairman of the committee. He wanted to appeal to my goodwill to set up a committee. I asked him if he was sure about that, and he responded affirmatively. I needed to be sure because most of the committee reports he never attended to them, but he promised that would be different. Length and breadth of the story, when we completed it, we recommended the suspension of some of the principal officers.
Imagine me, a Senior Lecturer and chairman of ASUU, now asking for the suspension of the principal officers. They tried to trivialize it, then I became serious, and I assumed my leadership of the union, that is how they now decided to link us up with invited House of Assembly members and you know people are used to collecting money. I thought they were going to praise me for having to make them want to utilize the money, instead, they said I was using my power wrongly. I survived that by ensuring I did the right thing. So even if you are challenging me later, you remember that this man is doing this not just for his benefit, but for the benefit of others. I believe in sacrificial leadership, not opportunistic leadership. Till today, whenever I get to Ekpoma, they still remember my deeds.
As Deputy Vice-Chancellor (DVC), you played a critical role in stabilizing tensions between the Students’ Union Government (SUG), led by Comrades Philip Shaibu and Mike Akpobire, and the university management. How did you manage this delicate balance and prevent major student unrest?
That was when I came to Delta State University. I was a Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and there was this problem with the Student Union Government (SUG) led by Akpobire and then Shuaibu, who was in charge of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS). And there were problems with the university authorities, they distorted academic activities and all. There was a showdown, and that night, they abducted our VC and took him to Ekpoma. I was not available then, as I did not live on campus, but when I got wind of the development, I found myself jumping from one police station to another, only for us to finally find out that he was at Ekpoma. We had to do whatever we did to get him out of that place. I was now running the university at that time before we did the peace meeting with the Commissioner of Police, the Director of the State Security Service, and the student activists, and we discussed. What helped me in all of that was my background as an activist. We have a language in activism, and I was speaking their language, and it helped me a lot to answer questions. It was my background in activism that helped me manage the affairs, and we were able to sustain relative peace, but not after a lot of destruction had taken place.
At a time in DELSU, many lecturers did not have PhDs, but with policies put in place by you and Prof OvieIgun, many have since risen to the rank of professor. How did you navigate resistance and ensure the successful implementation of this policy?
I remember many rose to the rank of Professor, despite the initial resistance. They were correct to express some resistance, but we got that directive from the National Universities Commission (NUC) that a certain proportion of the academics must have their PhDs. And, if you are in a university, would you be happy to be taught by somebody who is just a Mister? You will even get to a level where you desire to be taught by a professor, not just a Doctor. Then imagine where more than 60 per cent of the staff were more of Misters. So we had to put in place policies that will make them go for that, such as subsidising their pay, such that while on their programmes, they will still be paid their fees, reduced the workload and all those kinds of things. But you know, people are resistant to change, and I tell you, there was no name that they did not call us. But we continued because we knew what we were doing. Today, the majority of them are now professors, and I don’t think I can remember any one of them who bought me pure water as a token of appreciation, despite all the insults. In essence, that is what it means to be called a leader. A leader must be ready to step on toes, provided he’s sure he knows what he is doing.
In one of the Onu-Ika yearly lecture series, you spoke extensively on improving agriculture and agribusiness, making several recommendations. Do you believe the government has taken these recommendations seriously?
The government did that at that time, as you remember because the key recommendations had to do with the need to get some of the otherwise roving youths to undergo some training at the farming scheme (Songhai Delta) at Amukpe, Sapele. When you go there, you will fall in love with Agriculture. I said they should do that and they did. But what happened? They took that because Shonekan was the chairman of that occasion, and then, at that time, Uduaghan was Governor, and Okowa was Secretary, with the late Prof Utuama as deputy. They all came, and if you see the way they were rushing the paper that day. The irony was when they set up the committee to use my paper as the working paper, rather than make me the chairman or even a member of that committee, they took one of my colleagues, I don’t want to mention names, to be a member of that committee. It is ironic that the recommendation that I made, I was not involved in the implementation, and that is part of the marginalization I have suffered being here, and that is because of what they think. They think I do not know how to compromise and that I will not be a team player, whatever that means. I couldn’t have succeeded as a Unionist if I was not a team player.
To answer your question, they took it seriously, but I was not involved in the implementation.
The removal of the fuel subsidy has seen Nigerians experience severe economic strain. As an economist, do you think the policy is necessary for long-term growth, or is it a misstep?
It’s a good policy. However, the President announced it casually, recklessly. We needed reforms, and every economy is always subject to one form of reform or the other, let alone Nigeria, many things had gone upside down. We needed reform in the oil sector. We needed to remove the fuel subsidy. But the problem was the way it was implemented.
It was announced without any concrete way to go about it. Everywhere around the globe, certain things are subsidised for citizens. But in subsidizing, you must stratify. That is, you must divide the subsidy and put it into divisions, allocate it and make sure you allocate it to some classes of people. Some need it more than others. That is why you find that the Republicans have issues with Trump. Trump is there to ensure that the rich people pay less tax, whereas they should do the other way around because it belongs to that class. So, the subsidy should be differentiated in the sense that some need it more. But here, there is a wholesome implementation and what is been saved from the hitherto importation, into what use are you putting them? You have promised us severally what you are going to do, but where are they? We have reached a level where we no longer believe in government. So there is no trust in the government, and they are not living by example.
Otherwise, to answer a question, the subsidy needed to be removed, but in removing it, the excess gain you are making, where are you putting it? We would have been putting it into more productive usages than seeing it as another surplus for them to primitively accumulate. Our economy has not gained from the surplus generated from the removal of fuel subsidies due to the Nigerian factor.
Let us come back to the theme of the day, which is your celebration. Your faculty, department, friends, and mentees have come together to celebrate your impact. What do you think are the key reasons behind this overwhelming show of appreciation?
You used the right word, appreciation. I am overwhelmed. The magnitude of support has overwhelmed me, honestly. You can see that this building is fully powered, courtesy of an inverter. I am no longer worried about public power supply. That is one of the testaments of their support. We are also having a one-day public lecture, and there will be a lot of eating and drinking, and the school will be shut down for my sake. That tells you that it is really good to be good. It is not always you want the short-term benefit. Don’t forget that I started this job in Ekpoma, in 1983. So, I taught people in different spheres of life. It would interest you to know that the popular Tony Elumelu was one of my students. His younger brother, NdudiElumelu, was also my student. One of those involved in this ceremony just retired as the Auditor-General of the federation. I am overwhelmed with the support I have received. It is just the reward of my goodwill. I never exploited my students or believed in the commercialisation of scholarship; neither did I believe in the victimisation of students, regardless of their gender. Conduct yourself well, and people will come to you.
As a Professor at Delta State University, you are aware of some of their challenges and limitations, including funding issues, security concerns and infrastructure limitations. What is your take on that, being that you were there at some point before your retirement?
Funding, security and all you mentioned are not peculiarities of DELSU. It is a general problem at every institution, right from primary, secondary and tertiary institutions. So it is a normal thing, a normal expectation, and it’s something that if you recall the seriousness of it, that UNESCO advocated, that 25 per cent of the national budget should be allocated to education. We have never got up to six per cent, and if you now cascade downwards, you will now find the enormity of the problem there. It’s even worse now that even the limited resources that you have now have to be divided further for several universities.
We have many universities now in Delta State. So, that makes it worse. What they are doing now is to mobilize intakes. So the bulk of the money they use to run the university is generated from school fees. But of course, that will not go far; the Government will normally pay the salaries and other things, and the government have many competing wants, you cannot expect the government to put all the money into one university because that’s not the only school available. The universities need to look inward. They are doing, at least to the best of my knowledge, what they can. But there’s a limit they can look inwards, and what they do most often, even abroad, is to look at their alumni associations. Those who have arrived, you know, trying to fund that place.
I just talked about Elumelu now, and I’m sure he must have done something for them at Ekpoma because that is his place; even Chris Oyakhilome of Christ Embassy has also done something for the school. This is how most universities go by now, from their students who have been established.
You know, these days, it’s not enough (funding), that is why for you to be having two Deputy Vice Chancellors, or even three deputies, so that they can source for funds, meeting people who want to sponsor programmes or events. That is why you find the vices now assume a CEO position and so at times they come out like a dictator. Originally, the right way to run a university was by a committee and decisions are made by arriving at a consensus, but consensus is not easy to arrive at, which is the limitation of democracy. So, in effect, I’m saying, yes, it’s not peculiar to DELSU in terms of fund deficit, but they’re also doing their best to ensure that they augment whatever comes from the government. Yes, they are doing their best.
Given your experience on the legislative committee on education planning at the Federal Legislative Institute, what is your assessment of Nigeria’s education system, and what reforms do you think are urgently needed?
You see, if you follow the National Assembly, you find that most of them see universities as a constituency project for their constituencies. They virtually donate universities to their communities, establishing universities every day.
So one of the ways of revamping the sector is to collapse some of these universities, if it’s possible, okay, collapse them. In Delta State, for instance, I’m one of the few persons who do not support the number of universities we have here now. What they needed to do was to expand the carrying capacity of the existing ones to accommodate more students, and at best, even if you must bring development to those areas, make it a campus rather than the full-fledged universities that we have now.
One of the best ways of doing that is to collapse these universities. You know these suggestions are political because anyone who tries to close down Agbor (UNIDEL) now or close Ozoro (Southern Delta University) has killed himself politically. So they are burdened with that until somebody can take such a risk, just as Tinubu did, taking that risk with the removal of fuel subsidy.
History has shown that any government that undertakes drastic reforms does not survive the next electoral cycle, but you know, Nigeria is a place where anything can happen. I’m saying any government that wants to collapse these universities must, must be sure that they are only going to have just one term in office. So, one way is to collapse them so that we do not spread our resources thinly.
Secondly, what is also encouraging them is TETFUND. That is why both state universities came up. That is one of the things we (ASUU) fought for under Jega. Now, politicians want to make a mess of it, and ASUU is even resisting. TETFUND is one of the major sources of sustenance for these universities. Most of the buildings there are from TETFUND, not the government. So when you hear the government say they are building facilities in schools, if you find out, most times, it is TETFUND.
Do you believe Nigerian professors receive the respect and honour they deserve compared to their counterparts in other parts of the world?
The way you asked the question, the answer is self-evident. They are not. Some of us were just lucky. I told you I didn’t spend all my life in university. If I spent all my life in university, we would not be sitting here, and perhaps the students would not be honouring me today because, in an attempt to survive, I would find myself doing odd things that would not endear me to the students. So I think I’ve had examples to tell you that they are not honoured. They are not given their deserved respect, and that is why you find them now going to do all sorts of things. You now find professors becoming Special Advisers to ordinary commissioners and ministers. You don’t easily do that, but that is the only way they can get some change. They are supposed to be involved in research, but politicians have taken over research. You talk of consultancy now it’s no longer available.
