Recently, the Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Science and Technology, Minna, Professor Masbau Akanji, granted a pre-convocation interview to selected media houses from Abuja. AUGUSTINE OKEZIE was there
How would you judge Nigeria’s education system generally?
Before I came here I have had the privilege of being a vice Chancellor in the private University. This is a Federal University; there are two different things, the same goal, and two different ways. Nigeria’s education system generally has been be-deviled especially at the higher education level by instability in the academic calendar.
So because of instability, students cannot predict when they will finish. it had affected progression from undergraduate to postgraduate levels so much so that our students are forced to miss a period before they can fit into other things all over the world I don’t subscribe to the believe that the standard of education has been affected because of the instability in calendar. So by and large they will have the proliferation of sudden increase in number of tertiary educational institutions which has also affected concentration of quality of teachers.
So all these have its own effect and with time there will be stability. Because of the number of candidates seeking admission one cannot actually criticize the way Educational institutions are increasing. so on the whole, when you go to Europe or you go to America our graduates do very well so that is why I don’t think the quality of the students themselves or their preparation is going down.
What the present challenges you are facing as you clock 31
On facilities: we have problem of facilities in our university, especially in science based programmes than in humanities.
We have large number of students to lecture and this affects the quality of instruction or how instruction is imbibed. In many places there is a limit to number of students you have in class but you cannot enforce that here because for instance in 2013, 1.7million candidates wanted to enter the University which on the whole can take four hundred and sixty five thousand students.
So institutions are encouraged to take the maximum they can cope with because if you don’t take them, when they get to environments where facilities are readily available, electricity 24hours, water 24hours so the innate abilities come out and they perform very well.
How do you see the fate of Nigerian Universities in the future?
I think with the recent steps by the federal government to address the needs of the university, in the next two or three years, there is going to be a very massive change. For example N200billion has been promised the university system for 2013, modalities are been worked out now for the release of the money and the money is specifically designed to address specific areas. At FUT mina, the money they will give us will address the following: provision of water; we are in a place where to get water has been very difficult, we address provision of water, we address provision of electricity and we address the provision of hostels. if we are able to address these three, it will improve the performance of our students. So all over the country as I said N200billion have been promised for 2013 and like that for the next five years so it is hoped that by the time we get to the third year we would have started noticing positive changes in the university.
Looking at the combined convocations that is coming up on Saturday, what is your view of the university and what plans do you have for it?
We are about 31 years old now, so we are settled at 31 years of age, we have become adults and by becoming adults, we are nation without scientific development is doomed, so we intend to continue to contribute to the developmental growth of the country as a whole.
In your almost two years experience on the saddle what do you find as specific challenges facing the university?
Thank you very much, my findings mainly is that we lack some essential infrastructures being a science based institution .it is capital intensive, we lack several basic scientific equipment ,so attention has been geared towards attracting what will upgrade such facilities. Recently the federal government entered into an agreement with some development partners and we are beneficiary of 180million euros.
Those of us who are technical universities are beneficiaries. So we are in the process of making orders and we will use that to massively address our needs in terms of equipments. The type of money we need is different from the type of money other conventional universities will need like in engineering professions: architecture, quantity survey, and so on are capital intensive programmes .
So what we want to do is to attract more money to ourselves to encourage or enter into partnership with institutions at various places and from various corners of the world where we can do student exchange, staff exchange to improve on our curriculum. we shall not hesitate
NUC has directed universities to encourage entrepreneurship programmes, to address unemployment where is your school.
Long before then we have established a whole school of entrepreneur and management studies, so every programme that is run here has an aspect of entrepreneurship. we have complied even long before the NUC made it mandatory and it is very effective .whatever programme you are running here you will take sufficient courses in entrepreneurship so that you can be job creators not just really job hunters.
Every programme that we are running have the scope of entrepreneur and management technology that incorporates entrepreneur into every programme ,engineering, agriculture, even sciences, have complied with that.
I think to my mind the problem of unemployment is global you will recollect that even in Europe there are legislations that says that if you are a foreigner there are certain jobs you can not get. we have a large number of youths who are educated who can not get job because they are looking for work.
The first question you ask about unemployment will come into effect if you have decline in entrepreneurship. See poultry, if you look at our commercial farm on this campus where students are taken to see how we practicalize Agriculture produced, you will be convinced that we are serious here.
What is the level of relationship between management, staff and students?
I think it is cordial in this office students can come in anytime but I prefer 3-6pm. all officers of the university have their phone numbers on the web so that they can call us, they can email us and we insist that there must be a reply whether it is negative or positive.
What about the case of cultism
It is minimal through out the past two years; we have not had a single case of cultism because we take pre-emptive measures. We make everybody know that if you are caught with any anti- social behavior, it is outright expulsion. We have a very active security system that does investigative monitoring.
