6 May 2008
interview
Lagos — Abdullahi Mahdi, a professor of History, was Vice Chancellor (VC) Ahmadu Bello University (ABU). He is the current and pioneer VC of Gombe State University (GSU), a university that, observers say, holds a lot of promise from the way it is being developed in a bold way, to avoid all the pitfalls of its forebears.
Why establish a university in a state like Gombe that is struggling with primary and secondary education? Though controversial, I think Governor Danjuma Goje did the right thing in establishing the university. Education is a complete circle. You can't separate primary from secondary, from university education. If you do not have universities, you will not have teachers teaching in secondary schools or teacher training colleges, and if you don't have these you cannot have teachers teaching in primary schools. The educational backwardness in the north is absolute and you cannot talk about improvement of primary, secondary and other tertiary education in Gombe without establishing a university, which will be the engine room of developing the entire educational system in the state. So it is absolutely necessary and basic.
Do you have a different vision from the surrounding federal universities of which Gombe State is one of their catchment areas?
There are universities that we measure up to. We look up to the standard of Cambridge, Oxford, Yale and other universities in the world. Whereas we have responsibility to Gombe State government and its peoples, this does not mean we should give less education in terms of standards, than any other university in the world. We admit people right across the country, both in terms of staff and faculty because we recognise that a university is a universal institution. So we will give attention to Gombe, but we will also give attention to others; we even draw students from neighbouring African countries like Niger Republic, Chad and Cameroon, but we will not allow the standard to be low because we want to cater for Gombe; everybody will have to compete.
Looking up to Cambridge, Oxford etc, suggests you aspire to be world class. Do you believe you have the potentials for that?
Yes, we have. Three things make a good university. First, the facilities, laboratories and state of the art equipment here have been drawn straight from the United Kingdom. They are as good as found in any university in the world. Secondly, faculty-wise, our staff, which we have been drawing from various parts of the world like New Zealand, Germany, Asia/South East Asia, and the United Kingdom; not to talk of those we are drawing from neighbouring countries such as Ghana, Cameroon and Niger Republic are as good as any other in the world. In terms of size vis a vis ratio of staff, we have the greatest concentration of expatriate staff in this university, comparable to any other. We have signed memoranda of understanding with universities right across the world to send their staff to teach part-time on exchange bilateral basis. Thirdly, concerning students, we have a school for basic and remedial studies of which we have drawn quite a number of them from Gombe, but we must make sure that they measure up to our standard. For example last year, we admitted 700 remedial students but after a year, we could only matriculate 200, because the remaining 500 could not measure up to our standard, they were weeded away. A very pathetic situation, but here we are not governed by sentiments, but by our quest for real standard. Right now we are collaborating with the state government to train and retrain teachers in primary and secondary schools. Connected to these also, is our determination to keep the student intake very low. It is surprising that some Nigerian universities which were established only 10 to 20 years ago have up to 20,000 to 30,000 students. In America (USA), there are universities that were established 200 years ago still having only 3,000 to 5,000 students. The ideal thing in the university system is to have one teacher to one student unlike in our university system where you have one teacher to about 1,000 or 2,000 students. So we have deliberately kept our student intake to the barest minimum to make sure that we know them by name and by face so we can take care of their academic, social and other needs. These are the things that make a university and this is what gives me confidence that we will turn out very good graduates; it is neither the size nor age of the university.
How many professors do you have to the number of lecturers in your faculties and how do these numbers relate to the number of undergraduates?
Although we are only three years old, in every department we have an average of two to three professors and some of them are expatriates drawn from various parts of the world. We also have two to three Readers (Associate Professors) and Senior Lecturers in every department. The point is that we are meeting the recommended ratio of the type of staff pyramidal structure as recommended by the National Universities Commission (NUC) and in fact going beyond the standard the NUC has prescribed. So I can assure you that the number of ratio of professors to readers, readers to senior lecturers, senior lecturers to lecturers I, lecturers I to lecturers II and so on and so forth, is being taken care of. We have less than 2,000 students from 100 to 300 levels. We will graduate our first set of students next year (2009).
One of the indices of measuring the standard of a university is the quality of research the staff is involved in. What kind of research are your staff involved in?
One reason why Nigerian universities do not measure up to even African universities, let alone world universities, has to do with a number of indices; one of them is research component. You cannot teach in the university without getting involved in very serious research. We are very young but one reason why we are drawing professors across the world is to make sure that research is given its priority. Some of these professors like in geography, had taught in Nigerian universities before they retired back to their various countries, we are bringing them in not to teach but to establish solid research foundation in various departments and to give proper academic leadership to the younger lecturers. We produce journals where every staff has to present a paper at least once a year at either departmental or faculty or university level which must be peer reviewed not only locally but also by well established scholars. I don't think in recent years there is any university in Nigeria that has drawn world class scholars right across the world to give high intensity and quality public lectures and seminars as we did. This is part of the attempt to make sure that staff of this university is involved in critical research
What are your plans for manpower development?
Since the policy in this university is that graduate assistants, assistant lecturers and to an extent lecturers II are barred from teaching until they complete their higher degrees, we have enlisted the cooperation of neighbouring universities to train them to doctorate degree level. We have entered into memoranda of understanding with the foreign universities we draw the professors I mentioned from and also have exchange programmes with them although we lean towards them more. We have even started to send some of our academic staff to these universities as far as New Zealand, United Kingdom and South East Asia to get their higher degrees.
But what of student exchange?
We have now started with the University of New Zealand and just recently some of their students came here and spent some time. Right now we are sending our staff, and we hope we will be sending our students to some universities in Israel and Egypt where the graduate assistants and assistant lecturers will do certain aspects of the history and politics of the Middle East. At this rate we will have so many of our students and staff doing either their higher degrees or part-time or post-doctorate studies in these overseas universities, just as we will also be receiving students from other universities to come and spend one or two semesters and go with part of our course credits back to their universities.
How are you dealing with the issue of funding, a major problem of Nigerian universities?
I agree Nigerian universities are under-funded but I also agree there is a lot of waste in the system. I know what I am talking about. It depends on how you use resources. When you see the kind of things that are happening in this university in terms of infrastructure and facilities; you can see that we are using our resources properly. So far so good, the state government has been funding this university very well, I have no complaint about it, but also our success has to do with the way we have been utilising these resources. It is not the quantum of resources that matter, but the way you apply it. This has been well established in Nigeria, Look at the resources that we have in this country and look at the situation we are in.
Given the importance of institutions like yours in producing manpower for the whole nation, how is the private sector assisting you?
To begin with, I don't even believe that there is a private sector worth the name; they are just feeding fat if you take into consideration the revelations that are coming out now (N13 billion power sector scandal); are they not these so-called captains of industries, these real crooks? Secondly, I don't even think the private sector is interested in encouraging educational development. Here and there, there are some banks which endow chairs, and there are some of these oil companies that have been taking a lot of Nigerian resources, and give out token scholarships. We would expect much more from these companies who are just dipping their hands into the resources. Except for the banks and oil companies, I do not see who you call the private sector. Who are the private sectors?
So what of scholarship schemes for special students, does the university have a way of helping, maybe indigent students?
Well, we are starting this in our own little way. In our first admission, we admitted a young blind man who is now doing very well; we are providing all the necessary facilities for him to take advantage of his intellect. We have also been admitting cripples. With all degree of modesty I have personally given scholarships to about 100 students including the physically challenged and the indigent students. I thought we should go by example before others follow.
Given the meagre fee that is paid how are you coping with the problems of feeding and accommodation of students?
We are virtually charging next to nothing in terms of fees because of our realisation that we are situated in a very weak part of the country, materially. Since we are a new university we must encourage people, bearing in mind the historical, cultural, religious and all sorts of reasons that are preventing people from availing themselves with education. We need to praise the state government because it is indirectly underwriting the difference. Sooner or later though, school fees will go up but it is going to be very, very gradual to the point that it will not be a burden on parents. We are trying to give 100 per cent accommodation to all our students on a single campus although right now there is slight congestion in the female hostel because the other segment of accommodation being constructed has not been completed. For male students we have no problem of accommodation we can afford to accommodate 100 per cent on the campus and we are also embarking on construction of new hostels now. We are insisting that everybody must be accommodated on a single campus not necessarily to be reading every time but to also socialize through clubs. There is no difference between us and Aso Rock in terms of power supply; we have excellent health facilities, ample water supply, very beautiful environment in terms of landscaping and gardens and a constellation of libraries. Without the distractions of having to come from town, we will be able to produce the high quality graduates we aim for. We do not feed students directly but we do regulate the supply of food on the campus. We have also provided kitchenettes, with free electricity, in the hostels for students who want to cook their food. With time we may adopt the cafeteria system.
Some people may argue that you spend a lot of money on beautification, why won't this money go to academics?
First of all we have satisfied the academics by providing the latest journals and books. We provide funds for research to any staff who would want to go to the field whether archaeologist or geographer. More than that, these landscaping and gardens are also part of the learning process. When you walk around for about five to ten minutes, if you are congested, by the time you go back to the library your absorbing capacity would be very great, you will easily get refreshed by looking at the beautiful environment, so it enhances learning processes. Do you know that Nigeria is the dirtiest country in the world? I have been to various parts of the world; there is no country that I have gone to, which beats the amount of filth from Lagos to Maiduguri. The way we desecrate the place with faeces, I don't think there is any country in the world that you see people passing excreta freely without shame like this country and the environment is so hostile, the way Nigerians are behaving has to do with the nature of the environment. Every university campus in the world is associated with the beauty of its environment. Some of our university campuses for heaven's sake are only good for breeding pigs.
Your website indicates that the university is going to be developed over a period of 25 years and you are in the first five years, how will the second phase of development be and when is it taking off?
Actually we have even revised this 25-year development plan as it is rather too ambitious. At the beginning you know we have only three Faculties - Science, Arts and Social Sciences and Education. Council, senate and government have approved the establishment of Faculties of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences, so we hope that by the end of the year we are going to have five faculties and for a very long time to come we are only going to take care of these five faculties. Our policy is to promote excellence in our education, to make sure that the product of this university will make a lot of difference, so these five faculties will measure up to any in the world. The faculties of medicine and pharmaceutical sciences combined will not have up to 100 students. Once we keep the numbers down, provide world class facilities and admit good students, then we are assured of very good products.
This university has not been going on ASUU strike, why so?
I believe in the philosophy of unions, I believe in ASUU not just because I was ASUU Chairman in ABU, but I believe in trade unionism. We are however too young to start unionism, let's take off properly and try to make sure that the condition of service is as good as any other university, in fact better. Some of the allowances that we have paid our staff, even some of the federal universities are not paying them. We have other unions, but sooner or later I will lead the formation of ASUU in this university.
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