Why acquiring official transcripts is delayed at UNILAG – VC

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, has explained why there is delay in processing applications for official transcripts at the institution.

He said there were several challenges involved in the processing transcripts and other related documents, hence, the delay.

Mr Ogundipe, a professor, spoke at an online meeting of the North American chapter of the institution’s alumni association held on Sunday.

Members of the association had decried the difficulty and delay involved in acquiring an official transcript from the institution.

They said the delay had affected most of them, saying it had cost them great opportunities.

Mr Ogundipe, who was present at the meeting, said it was discovered that there were about 2,000 cases of unavailable results which ranged from the 2008/2009 session down to the first graduating session.

“Following this discovery, it became pertinent to resuscitate the Taskforce on unavailable result,” he said.

The VC said the taskforce had already assisted in recovering over 1,000 results.

He listed some of the problems associated with the unavailable results as unclassified graduating session, wrong classification of degree, one unavailable semester result, and two or more unavailable results.

Others, he said, include result not approved, unavailable results for Institute of Continuing Education (ICE) and SANDWICH programmes, and inconsistent date of birth.

The Institute of Continuing Education (ICE), which was established by the Senate of the University in 2009 to coordinate all the undergraduate degree programmes, runs on a part-time basis in the various faculties of the university.

The SANDWICH programme is an evening programme that runs during the period when full-time students are on holidays or long vacation which is sometimes around July/August to November/December. The programme runs for five years.

“Every week, we get nothing less than two reports from EFCC, ICPC, and others so if you falsify your date of birth, you should know there are consequences,” he said.

The VC also said the university lacked several pieces of equipment such as computers, printers, metallic file cabinets, an uninterrupted internet facility, and office space for storage.

He,however, said the aforementioned equipment had all been provided and taken care of, besides the storage space because the office is not large enough.

“We have gotten new computers which should be installed before the end of the week. We received support from TETFUND,” he said.

He said another major hindrance was the high cost of electricity supply which the federal government had provided a solution to, but noted the institution still had certain challenges.

“The federal government has given us an Independent Power Plant (IPP) which can provide 8.02 megawatts out of the 8.03 that we consume per day, but the construction process is going on very slowly because of our environment. The wetlands are not favourable”, he said.

He said the phase one of the sand-filling had just been completed whereas other universities that received the IPP had almost completed construction.

He said another challenge was the fact that any income generated by the university has to go into the Treasury Single Account which is unfavourable for them.

He said the National Assembly frequently summons them to question their expenditure and to reprimand them if any money is spent without their approval.

He said this was particularly discouraging because in the end,the amount of money allocated to federal universities is not enough for all their operations.

“I know a federal university that last had electricity supply in April last year because they could not keep up with the high electricity cost,” he said.

“These are the things we go through… The issue of transcript is not isolated from other pressures in the university”, he said.

Procedure for Student Copy Transcripts

The Vice-Chancellor also broke down the process involved in acquiring a student copy transcript.

He said graduates, who left the institution from 2010 academic session till date, can get their student copy transcripts generated and dispatched within one to three days.

“For graduates who have processed transcripts before, transcripts are generated and dispatched within one to three days”, he said.

He said for graduates who completed their programmes from 2009/2010 and below, their transcripts are generated manually.

Mr Ogundipe then gave a breakdown of how graduates could acquire their student copy transcripts.

“In response to some of our students requesting to have unofficial transcripts, a platform was created for students within the 2010/2011 academic session to date, to access student copy transcripts”, he said.

He said they would first log in to the student portal on the university website: www.unilag.edu.ng and then click on “Academic Transcript – Student Copy” link.

“Once programme is selected, the student will be required to make a payment of N1, 000 online or generate a payment advice and make payment at any accredited commercial bank in Nigeria,” he said.

He said that once payment is made, the transcript will be sent to the student’s email address as an attachment.

Developments

Mr Ogundipe also said the university was making developments that will make the procurement of transcripts quicker and easier.

The first, he said, is the introduction of a Legacy Digital Platform.

“In order to ensure that students whose results were not generated via the premier platform have access to students’ copy, a legacy digital platform has been created to accommodate all transcripts that have ever been prepared from inception till the 2008/2009 academic sessions,” he said.

He said the upload of these transcripts was about eighty percent completed.

The VC said the completion affords all fresh requests for transcripts within the aforementioned academic years to be processed on the platform.

“This affords graduates who process fresh transcripts within this cohort to have access to student copy transcript,” he said.

Mr Ogundipe also said the university was working on capturing and digitizing old/hard copy results.

“It is expected that when fully developed, all the hard copy results from the 2008/2009 academic session to the first graduating class of the university will be digitized in phases”, he said.

The VC said seventy percent of transcript requests are processed to the World Education System (WES) to provide a more efficient and effective system of processing transcripts forwarded to WES, adding that UNILAG is at an advanced stage in the modalities to process e-transcript to WES.

“We have conducted a successful upload test on the interface provided by WES. Once we fully integrate the e-transcript to the WES interface, there will be no need for a second-level verification from the body,” he said.