BY KEN UGBECHIE

There is a university in Uburu community in Ebonyi. King David University of Medical Sciences is beyond a constellation of architectural masterpieces. It’s a loud statement of hope in our decaying education sector. It bears Governor David Umahi’s vintage signature of excellence. You cannot visit this institution and not feel proudly Nigerian. The concept is modern and graces the same page with the very best universities in the world. Classrooms, staff quarters, air-conditioned hostels, laboratories fitted with the latest medical equipment; the ensemble of faculty is simply best of the best.

Both in morphology and physiology, this university is a class apart. Not many Nigerians know the mighty acts of development being wrought by Umahi in Ebonyi. A civil engineer, he brings his professional mettle to bear on his job. He’s quick to remind you that he’s a civil engineer. It’s deliberate. As proof of his engineering prowess, he flaunts the roads in Ebonyi, urban and rural roads built to last the decades. They are not the usual roads you know. They are built with cement sitting on multiple layers of sturdy rods of iron. These roads are in both rural and urban Ebonyi. They are strong, thick and do not show signs of wear even as they have been built several years back. “Don’t forget, I’m a civil engineer,” the Governor quips to douse the shock and disbelief draping your face.

But this piece is not about Umahi’s roads, bridges and the widespread collection of infrastructure. It’s about the university of medical sciences. It’s on what is about to befall such a grand vision, by far the very best in Nigeria. Umahi says the university, complete with its teaching hospital (specialist centres), was purpose-built to arrest capital flight through medical tourism in Nigeria. Rather, he wants the world to fly to Nigeria to get a cure. He wants Nigeria to earn forex by becoming the preferred destination for those embarking on medical tourism from even as far as Europe, Asia and the Americas.

The gadgets tell the story better and most eloquently. This university can effectively handle and manage any ailment. It’s built for comfort; both for the students, lecturers (doctors) and other support staff. A recent tour of the university and interface with some staff doused every fear that Nigeria is irredeemable. In this varsity and through it, you could find a spark of hope, a strand of self-belief that all is not lost. Nigerians can still dream. Nigerians can still hope. Umahi has kindled the flame of hope, at least in medicare.

Now, something is about to happen to the university, which has just matriculated its first set of students as a state university. Such emblem of academic excellence and specialist medical centre should have been left the way it is; in the hands of its original owner, the Ebonyi State government. All that is about to change, indeed, have changed. The federal government, the same FG that cannot effectively run its own universities, has taken over this model of a citadel of learning.

Here’s how the journey began. In early May this year, President Muhammadu Buhari was in Ebonyi to commission the university among other projects. There and then, Governor Umahi made an offer to the Federal Government to take over the university. Not a few people twitched at the governor’s request. This writer was indifferent until my visit and tour of the specialist university recently. My verdict: King David University does not deserve the ownership of the Federal government. It’s the closest comparison to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; an established medical research centre and hospital that has made the United States a preferred destination for medical tourism.

Governor Umahi built a centre of medical excellence. I guess the governor must have thought of what will befall the university when he leaves office. Will the next government take care of the university, run it and maintain the envisioned high standard? Perhaps, the governor was right. An incoming government and in fact successive governments in the state may look away, leaving the university to rot and rust. But the solution is not in the federal government taking ownership of such strategic university. The federal government already has too many nuts in the fire. It can hardly fund existing universities under its ownership. They suffer from infrastructure deficiency. Lecturers are under-paid and research is never a priority.  By handing over King David University to the FG, the governor has unwittingly removed it from the path of efficiency to the corridor of ineptitude and negligence. A university of such standard should have been privatized. Another option would be for the state to partner with private equities to manage the university. The best of universities in the world are not public universities. They are private universities and they are managed efficiently such that nouveau riche Nigerians have made them the universities of first choice for their children.

King David University of Medical Sciences will suffer abuse in the hands of the federal government. First, as a federal university, the faculty will be unionized and admitted into the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU. Non-academic staff will also be ushered into the waiting hands of Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities, NASU. That will automatically put the model university on a spin into the cesspit of academic and research decomposition.

It’s despairing to hear that on Tuesday, September 6, the federal government formally took over the university as requested by Umahi and accepted by President Buhari. Anybody who has visited the university and is conversant with the fate and sorry state of federal universities, particularly the public sector lethargy that has infested public universities teaching hospitals, would feel sad for this change of ownership of a brilliant concept which is what King David University is. It’s hard to fathom how a federal government that has not managed existing public universities or funded critical researches in cutting edge innovation would ever bother to replace or repair basic air-conditioning units in the students’ hostels at King David University. The university is designated a specialist centre. How can a federal government that has not funded research at the University of Lagos or Obafemi Awolowo University even bother with a university still in its infancy?

Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, who signed the MoU on behalf of the federal government should move fast and recommend to President Buhari that this new baby, still healthy with chubby cheeks, be privatized. That way, its sanity, sanctity and steadfast avowal to maintain excellence at all times in teaching, learning and service delivery as envisioned by the governor, would be maintained. To leave the King David University in the hands of the federal government is to decorate swine with pearls, they will muddy them in the gutters without flinching.  Envisioning what would become of the King David University in the next 10 years under the supervision of the federal government gives one the creeps.

Writing this piece and pondering the fate of such model university, now in the hands of a dysfunctional behemoth called the federal government, has been one heck of an emotional torture. I wish to hear in the coming weeks that the federal government has outsourced the management of this specialist university to a private equity.

-First published in Sunday Sun