By Dianam Dakolo
At the CBN Centre of Excellence, University of Port Harcourt, today, is a gathering of eminent citizens and students. A former President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, is Special Guest of Honour, while three state governors, Their Excellencies, Sir Siminalayi Fubara, Dr Alex Otti, and Senator Douye Diri, are Guests of Honour.
Professor Sylvanus John Sodienye Cookey, Vice Chancellor of the University between 1982 and 1989, turned 90 today, and the University had to re-enact what it did in 2014, when he was 80. It’s a University with institutional memory, ever expressive of its veneration and adoration for a man, who did so much in very austere times, under the Economic Stabilisation (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1982 of the era of President Shehu Shagari to build a University that became a model to others. Under that Act, there was 40 per cent slash in public spending by the Federal Government and suspension of capital projects.
Through effective planning and resourcefulness, and with remarkable support from the institution’s Senate, he was able to ensure adequate staffing, attracting to the institution the best of Nigerian academics in the United States and Europe, and to provide essentials in the laboratories to meet accreditation requirements of the National Universities Commission.
Revenue generation drive in the University under his administration began with College of Continuing Education (for part-time university degrees and diplomas), Port Harcourt, the first of its type in Nigeria. He established University Investments Limited which, among other things, acquired shares in blue chip companies in those days that yielded good returns. Under partnership arrangements, various academic departments of the University provided technical services to the then National Fertilizer Company of Nigeria (NAFCON), Onne, Michelin Tyres, Shell Petroleum Development Company, Nigerian Agip Oil Company, Ashland Oil, among others, from which it was able to generate much-needed resources, and also create opportunities for academics to acquire practical knowledge of their fields of specialisation.
He got the University connected to Nigeria’s electricity National Grid and also expanded telecommunication facilities and services. He built five multi-storeyed student hostels, with the special assistance of Dr Chu Okongwu, of blessed memory, Minister of Finance in the Ibrahim Babangida regime, who had been his classmate at St Michael’s School, Aba, in the early 1940s. He built the University Sports Complex, which had underground drainage for its football pitch and tracks (first of its type in any Nigerian institution) and the main road leading from the University Gate to the main campus known as Abuja Park. The road was built out of a swamp. And he’s ever remembered for landscaping and beautification of Abuja Park.
These and a lot else that have earned him adoration and veneration all over Nigeria and beyond are in his biography, A TORCHBEARER FOR ALL SEASONS: S.J.S. COOKEY AND THE TIMES, authored by me, but bearing my pen name Dianam Peresuo Dianam. There will be a public presentation of that 397-page book at the event today.
Anyone interested in my 2020 publication, FIFTY YEARS OF NIGERIAN HISTORY: FROM GENOCIDE AND WAR TO POLITICAL AMBIVALENCE (452 pages), with a Foreword by Professor S.J.S. Cookey, could pick up a copy of it at the CBN Centre of Excellence, UNIPORT, or at EMMY KLASS BOOKSHOP, beside Everyday Supermarket, Choba, close to UNIPORT, or at Ebitare Bookshop, Yenizuegene, Yenagoa, and at SUNKY Supermarket, Azikoro, Yenagoa.
NB: Culled from Dianam Dakolo’s Facebook page.
