End of an era for man who brought discipline to University of Nairobi

After serving under seven Education ministers, Prof George Magoha, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nairobi (UoN), will be leaving his post having served the maximum 10 years.

He was appointed in 2005 after acting as VC the previous year — when Prof George Saitoti was the Education minister. Since then, Prof Magoha has worked with Dr Noah Wekesa, Mr William Ruto (now the Deputy President), Dr Sally Kosgei, Prof Hellen Sambili and Prof Margaret Kamar. Prof Jacob Kaimenyi, the current Education Cabinet Secretary, was once Prof Magoha’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor at UoN.

When he leaves the office of the Vice-Chancellor, Prof Magoha intends to take time off to be with his family and work on his memoirs.

“I need to think of my memoirs which I should put on paper when my memory is still fresh. It will be a very interesting memoir,” he said.

Born in 1952, Prof Magoha has been married to Dr Odudu Barbara Magoha since 1982 and they have one son, Dr Michael Magoha, who was born in 1985.

“My wife is a gynaecologist and my son is training to be a neurosurgeon. It is a small, nice family,” he said.

Though he has got several offers, including that of being a visiting professor, he wants to take some time off before deciding on his next move.

 “But whatever it is I settle on, part of it will be with my family which this particular office has taken me away from,” he said.

That, however, does not mean that he is fading from the Kenyan public life.

He was last week reappointed to serve as the chair of the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board for a five-year term. He also chairs the Kenya Association of Urological Surgeons.

NO APOLOGIES

For the decade he has been at the helm of the institution, Prof Magoha has largely brought order to Kenya’s premier university that was once notorious for frequent student riots at the slightest excuse. Critics have, however, described his management style as dictatorial. But the scholar and medical doctor has no apologies to make. 

“That is how I was trained at Starehe Boys’ Centre. It is not dictatorship. It is firmness with a goal. For us, our cup is never half-empty. It is always close to being full,” he told Lifestyle in an interview this week.

Before he took over, national politics had permeated the lecture halls and students were often used by politicians to cause mayhem in the city. The politicians had also used the Students Organisation of Nairobi University elections to test their popularity.

But his no-nonsense approach has won him friends and foes as he battled to place the university on the world map.

“I have never allowed any political leader to come and do politics inside the university for the past 10 years and God is my witness. Whoever it may be, I have always maintained that they must give me space to run the university and, if they want to do politics, they can go outside the university,” he said.

As he prepares to leave his position, the university is now ranked top in East Africa, and number nine out of some 1,300 universities in Africa. It also emerged in the top 1,000 best universities in the world out of some 23,000 universities in the Webometrics Ranking.

“This is not something you can credit one person with. It has been teamwork,” said Prof Magoha.

Looking back at his tenure as the vice-chancellor, the 62-year-old surgeon said he had more or less achieved what he intended to do — changing the mindset of staff and students.

“First of all, with the benefit of hindsight, I actually do not see anything I would have done differently but we have had challenges on our way to the success that we have had,” he said.

Apart from the strikes that usually disrupted activities in the city, the university was in financial doldrums with debts owed to suppliers and pending statutory dues.

“Everybody has always assumed that when money belongs to the government it is there for grabs. For example, when you are building a house for the government, then it is like a bull being slaughtered and each person wants a piece of it. Yet our training has been that we perform our tasks the way we would do if it belonged to us (private property),” he said of the mindset that he found.

DIGITAL UNIVERSITY

With the support of then University Council whose members were mostly from the private sector, including Chancellor Joe Wanjui and chairman of the Council Dr John Simba, Prof Magoha set out to change the attitude.

In the 10 years he has been at the helm, he said, the thinking that the university is a quasi-government project where one can take time, lobby and do funny things has gradually changed. 

“It has been a challenge but it requires a very strong-minded person with a thick skin to move forward with it. We had to walk slowly but firmly and eventually when we had the numbers (support), we took off like a jet,” he said.

The result is that the accounts of the university, which he found unaudited for six years, are now up-to-date.

“We were then able to pay all the debts. As such, the university has been in good financial standing,” he said.

Making changes came at a cost as the university had to let go of some staff, especially when the financial management system was computerised. 

At the moment, Prof Magoha said the university has close to 10,000 computers.

“Our website has also changed and become better. It was ranked the best website in the Commonwealth as early as in 2006. It remains the same because that is why we are at position nine in Africa in the Webometric ranking,” he said, explaining that the ranking system considers things such as publications on the website.

He added: “We have also started an institutional depository where all the previous events in the university have been kept for posterity and that depository has been ranked number seven.”

His efforts, which others have seen as iron-fist management, have had the value of the university’s fixed assets increase from about Sh4 billion to approximately Sh106 billion.

On the academic front, UoN also boasts the largest pool of full professors — close to 150. There are also at least 300 associate professors besides senior lecturers and lecturers.

“We have been able to improve on the university brand by ensuring that we attract the best by maintaining high professional standards in terms of attracting human resources,” he said.

The university last year produced 95 PhD students, up from 19 a decade ago, and the goal is to get to 100 this year.

The student population has also more than doubled from about 35,000 when Prof Magoha took over to at least 79,000 — including starting campuses in  Mombasa, Kisumu and other major towns.

But one of the proudest moments for Prof Magoha at the tail end of his tenure has been the building of the 22-storey University of Nairobi Towers, next to the main administration block. Now on its 16th floor, the facility is expected to cater for at least 5,000 students once it is complete early next year.  

The building will also be home to the proposed Graduate School of Business aimed at top executives who do not wish to go to class with ordinary students.

“These types of courses are offered in other universities like Harvard and Stanford (in the US) and that is what we are aiming for,” said Prof Magoha.

But it has not all been rosy for the professor, who will be heading to retirement beginning January 6 next year, when his successor takes office.

The government is supposed to pick his replacement from a shortlist that consists of Prof Peter Mbithi, Prof Agnes Mwang’ombe, Prof Isaac Mbeche and Prof Lucy Irungu.

Already the process has caused some disquiet, with the Kenya University Staff Union and the University Academic Staff Union alleging attempts to favour one of the candidates.

But Prof Magoha said nothing could be further from the truth.

COMMERCIAL EDUCATION

“First of all, meritocracy is the word in the appointment of my successor and, whether anybody likes it or not, the university is greater than any of us,” he said.

But as the education authorities pore over the shortlist, the in-tray of his would-be successor is already overflowing.

According to Prof Magoha, the staff unions have started asking for negotiations on the new Collective Bargaining Agreement while the government has yet to give the go-ahead for the negotiations to start. In any case, he added, the university does not have the additional money that the staff are seeking.

The government gives the university Sh430 million as capitation yet the monthly payroll is Sh700 million, leaving a deficit of nearly Sh300 million.

“One must have Solomonic wisdom to succeed. You cannot come here and chest-thump. It is my considered opinion that quite a number of people who want to take over from me actually do not understand what they are getting into. But if they humble themselves, listen to advice and submit themselves to God for guidance, they will make it,” he said.

His successor will also have to oversee the completion of huge projects that, besides the UoN Towers, include a building in Kisumu and plans to build new student hostels on the five-acre piece of land next to Boulevard Hotel. The accommodation project is estimated to cost between Sh4 billion and Sh7 billion and will board up to 5,000 additional students.

“This university is within the city and there are other universities nearby. If you come and rock the boat, students will go to those other universities and you will not have money to run this university,” he added by way of advice.

For Prof Magoha, a university engaging in functions like setting up commercial enterprises and the Module II (parallel) programmes is not at all bad as long as the core business of academics is not compromised.

“The concept is good but calls for quality control so that our core business of academics is not compromised,” said Prof Magoha.

While the government supports universities financially, but the funds provided are not enough to sustain them, thus the need for other ventures.

“No university can survive on government stipend alone. If university managers did not sit down and think outside the box, our universities would have collapsed 20 years ago. At this university, we even destroyed the box,” he said.

The Module II programme was started by former Vice-Chancellor Francis Gichaga to raise funds to supplement the government’s contribution and keep the university running. 

DEVOLVING UNIVERSITIES

The institution now has a holding company, the University of Nairobi Enterprises and Services (UNES) alongside the Module II programme. UNES is a fees collection agent for Module II programmes, the university farm, hospitality facilities, the Chiromo Funeral parlour, bookshop and bookstore among others.

The 2010 Constitution provides that each of the 47 counties should have a university. Between 2012 and 2013, then President Mwai Kibaki established 15 fully fledged universities in addition to the seven that were in existence.

In addition, private universities have mushroomed in major towns and cities to compete with the public universities.

And the University of Nairobi has paid the price as it has lost a number of managerial staff at professorial level to go and run these other universities.

Prof Magoha’s parting shot, however, is that the government must approach the expansion of higher education cautiously.

“It is good to have controlled expansion. It should not be driven by politics but should be professionally thought out, taking cognisance of the needs of the people,” he said.

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The academic and medic 

• A urologist by training, Prof Magoha studied medicine at the University of Lagos after his formative years in Yala, Starehe Boys’ Centre and Strathmore School for high school education

• He furthered his studies in surgery and urology at Lagos University Teaching Hospital; University College Hospital, Ibadan; Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin, Ireland and Royal Postgraduate Medical School Hammersmith Hospital, London Department of Urology, where he earned various academic awards

• He trained in executive management from Stanford University and has many international professional honours and awards. He came back to Kenya 25 years ago and has since been working at the University of Nairobi  

• He has also worked in various hospitals in Nairobi, including Kenyatta National Hospital, Nairobi Hospital, Mater Hospital and Aga Khan University Hospital as a consultant urologist.