The acting vice-chancellor of the Nasarawa State University,
Keffi, Prof Mohammed Akaro Mainoma, is an all-round alumnus of the
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The scholar of accounting and finance
committed 13 years of service to his alma mater, until he got to the
position of senior lecturer, before walking away to try new experiences.
Education analysts divide the issues bedevilling tertiary education in the country into three – poor research; poor content which results to poor quality of graduates and poor infrastructure. However, it is believed that there are other underlying factors which are hardly brought to the surface…
(cuts in) That’s very correct. The first issue is labour relations, in terms of competition within labour unions. As something is happening to the ASUU, SSANU is warming up to make its own demands. The laboratory technicians are also bidding their time. Therefore, you must ensure that you are careful to treat them all with the same degree of seriousness and give them all the same considerations. Most times, they may have no issues, at all; but because a body comes to the table with some of its challenges, another may feel that it needs some looking into, as well.
While all this is going on, you have to be bothered about your recurrent expenditure all the time. A department which runs on N5000 per month may decide to increase its requirement to N20,000 per month. You cannot agree to everything.
There are also the water and light situations which are nothing to write home about. You need to bother about bringing in diesel and water daily.
Promotion is another issue which needs to be taken into consideration. Some promotions are unnecessarily delayed and, at the end of the day, you discover that you need to effect some promotions which were supposed to be effected since 2013 and that you have to pay the arrears for those promotions. Since I came into office, I have effected two promotions, in order to ensure that I meet up.
In state universities, it is common place to see natives of the state who think it is their right to be admitted into the university, whether they are qualified or not. They usually refer to the university as ‘our own university’. Seeing as you need to balance the percentage from the state, the ‘catchment area’ and the ‘outsiders’, how have you been able to avoid friction?
The truth of the matter is that you have to make matters straight. Once you have it on ground that 40 per cent who must be admitted on merit, all you have to do is to list out the candidates, from the highest to the lowest and draw a line below the best 40. It is so transparent that you do not have to sweat over it. Issues like these only crop up when you admit someone who is unqualified over a qualified candidate. What’s the big deal? I can tell a candidate to his or her face that he or she is not qualified to gain a place and that’s that. It does not matter if you feel that it is your university as a native. You need to be qualified to be in your own university.
Since my coming, I have made it clear that since we have those who are qualified, we have no business with the unqualified. Time was when some candidates were admitted with deficiencies (in their ‘O’ levels). We don’t do that anymore; we stopped that in 2013. If you are, per chance, admitted and it is discovered that you do not have what it takes to be in the university you have to forfeit that admission. We have an avalanche of qualified candidates; why consider the unqualified?
If we need to admit 3000 candidates and we have 18000, all qualified (that is, having 180 and above), what business do we have with those who have less than that score? None.
However, where a native of the state is qualified and you opt for someone from Akwa Ibom, you may find yourself to blame for any friction in the system, because it is the resources of the state that is used in running the university. You have to give the state some credit, a quota.
Nigerian graduates have been labelled ‘half-baked’, most times, just for the fun of it. But if these candidates come into the system qualified (as far as the ‘O’ level is concerned), and they pass through the university system, is it not right to say that something goes wrong during their sojourn in the university? What makes the graduate half-baked? Is it the content of the curricular, the environment within which he learns or his receptivity to this content?
I must tell you that it has to do with the combination of a number of factors. First off, you find people who claim to be qualified but know nothing. Some of these young people have 10 credits, but some of them can’t even write their names. It is not about having it all on paper. Also, anyone looking to come into the university must be trainable. There are some who may not necessarily earn what they are presenting; some buy it while others cheat to get it. Now, when they write the UME (because JAMB is still a huge factor, unfortunately) where they have to write an exam based on a combination of these exams they have, they get an inflated JAMB score, say 280. If they come to write the post-UME exam and score, say 40 out of 100, this is added to the UME score and the candidate is almost sure of getting a place in the university (even though he did not earn the ‘O’ level). Now, they come into the university with the weight of a manipulated result. This is one factor.
The second factor is that it is possible to find some lecturers who do not go about imparting knowledge the right way. Also, a student may be qualified, but because he is not studying the right course, he may not do well in his course of study. There are other, too, who come into the university as very good students, but, upon entry, engage in other distracting activities and, at the end of the day, do not get it right.
To tackle this, we have put a monitory mechanism into place. These measures can help us check the whole system to the best of our ability. Teaching, quality of examination and assessment, screenings, invigilation and the likes are constantly monitored to ensure that they are done in the best of traditions. If every university does this, then we can all vouch for our graduates, to some extent.
Annually, the world’s universities are ranked based on a set of indices. Very few Nigerian universities have made the rankings and those who have made the rankings are not consistent. Why do you think this is so?
This is due to the kind of indices which the ranking body uses. A number of the factors used in the ranking of these universities are finance-related. If you do not have the funds, you may not be in the position to get in. If you do have the funds, though, and you succeed in getting in this year; if, by next year, you do not have the funds to follow-up on your progress, you may fall in the pecking order.
For example, all a university needs to do is to have a strong presence on the Internet, develop its site, such that all it activities are published on the web. Also, your every member of the university’s staff may be connected to that portal. This is a huge factor and it demands annual renewal. How many universities in Nigerian can afford to do that? They rely on the information you supply on net, not necessarily the physical. It is highly capital-intensive. That may explain why Nigerian universities do not always find their way in there.
How has that divide remained insurmountable, in spite of the proliferation of private universities?
That divide is quite huge. It may also surprise you to know that private universities are not doing anything different from what we are doing. The same lecturers who teach in state or federal universities are still the ones who go to lecture there. The only difference is that these universities are more interested in generating more income for themselves, not about solving the educational problems of the country. That is why the education issue may not really change.
And the solution…?
It is all the fault of the government. Why should you go to Lafia and establish a federal university for political reasons when all you have to do is channel the resources into the state university expand the faculties, build more infrastructures? Ideally, federal universities admit less than 1000 candidates but spend more than N40bn annually. Why not invest that much in the state university and increase the in-take to 20,000? When this is done, it takes away the pressure of catering for the tertiary institute y the state government and helps them to concentrate more on primary education.
Education analysts divide the issues bedevilling tertiary education in the country into three – poor research; poor content which results to poor quality of graduates and poor infrastructure. However, it is believed that there are other underlying factors which are hardly brought to the surface…
(cuts in) That’s very correct. The first issue is labour relations, in terms of competition within labour unions. As something is happening to the ASUU, SSANU is warming up to make its own demands. The laboratory technicians are also bidding their time. Therefore, you must ensure that you are careful to treat them all with the same degree of seriousness and give them all the same considerations. Most times, they may have no issues, at all; but because a body comes to the table with some of its challenges, another may feel that it needs some looking into, as well.
While all this is going on, you have to be bothered about your recurrent expenditure all the time. A department which runs on N5000 per month may decide to increase its requirement to N20,000 per month. You cannot agree to everything.
There are also the water and light situations which are nothing to write home about. You need to bother about bringing in diesel and water daily.
Promotion is another issue which needs to be taken into consideration. Some promotions are unnecessarily delayed and, at the end of the day, you discover that you need to effect some promotions which were supposed to be effected since 2013 and that you have to pay the arrears for those promotions. Since I came into office, I have effected two promotions, in order to ensure that I meet up.
In state universities, it is common place to see natives of the state who think it is their right to be admitted into the university, whether they are qualified or not. They usually refer to the university as ‘our own university’. Seeing as you need to balance the percentage from the state, the ‘catchment area’ and the ‘outsiders’, how have you been able to avoid friction?
The truth of the matter is that you have to make matters straight. Once you have it on ground that 40 per cent who must be admitted on merit, all you have to do is to list out the candidates, from the highest to the lowest and draw a line below the best 40. It is so transparent that you do not have to sweat over it. Issues like these only crop up when you admit someone who is unqualified over a qualified candidate. What’s the big deal? I can tell a candidate to his or her face that he or she is not qualified to gain a place and that’s that. It does not matter if you feel that it is your university as a native. You need to be qualified to be in your own university.
Since my coming, I have made it clear that since we have those who are qualified, we have no business with the unqualified. Time was when some candidates were admitted with deficiencies (in their ‘O’ levels). We don’t do that anymore; we stopped that in 2013. If you are, per chance, admitted and it is discovered that you do not have what it takes to be in the university you have to forfeit that admission. We have an avalanche of qualified candidates; why consider the unqualified?
If we need to admit 3000 candidates and we have 18000, all qualified (that is, having 180 and above), what business do we have with those who have less than that score? None.
However, where a native of the state is qualified and you opt for someone from Akwa Ibom, you may find yourself to blame for any friction in the system, because it is the resources of the state that is used in running the university. You have to give the state some credit, a quota.
Nigerian graduates have been labelled ‘half-baked’, most times, just for the fun of it. But if these candidates come into the system qualified (as far as the ‘O’ level is concerned), and they pass through the university system, is it not right to say that something goes wrong during their sojourn in the university? What makes the graduate half-baked? Is it the content of the curricular, the environment within which he learns or his receptivity to this content?
I must tell you that it has to do with the combination of a number of factors. First off, you find people who claim to be qualified but know nothing. Some of these young people have 10 credits, but some of them can’t even write their names. It is not about having it all on paper. Also, anyone looking to come into the university must be trainable. There are some who may not necessarily earn what they are presenting; some buy it while others cheat to get it. Now, when they write the UME (because JAMB is still a huge factor, unfortunately) where they have to write an exam based on a combination of these exams they have, they get an inflated JAMB score, say 280. If they come to write the post-UME exam and score, say 40 out of 100, this is added to the UME score and the candidate is almost sure of getting a place in the university (even though he did not earn the ‘O’ level). Now, they come into the university with the weight of a manipulated result. This is one factor.
The second factor is that it is possible to find some lecturers who do not go about imparting knowledge the right way. Also, a student may be qualified, but because he is not studying the right course, he may not do well in his course of study. There are other, too, who come into the university as very good students, but, upon entry, engage in other distracting activities and, at the end of the day, do not get it right.
To tackle this, we have put a monitory mechanism into place. These measures can help us check the whole system to the best of our ability. Teaching, quality of examination and assessment, screenings, invigilation and the likes are constantly monitored to ensure that they are done in the best of traditions. If every university does this, then we can all vouch for our graduates, to some extent.
Annually, the world’s universities are ranked based on a set of indices. Very few Nigerian universities have made the rankings and those who have made the rankings are not consistent. Why do you think this is so?
This is due to the kind of indices which the ranking body uses. A number of the factors used in the ranking of these universities are finance-related. If you do not have the funds, you may not be in the position to get in. If you do have the funds, though, and you succeed in getting in this year; if, by next year, you do not have the funds to follow-up on your progress, you may fall in the pecking order.
For example, all a university needs to do is to have a strong presence on the Internet, develop its site, such that all it activities are published on the web. Also, your every member of the university’s staff may be connected to that portal. This is a huge factor and it demands annual renewal. How many universities in Nigerian can afford to do that? They rely on the information you supply on net, not necessarily the physical. It is highly capital-intensive. That may explain why Nigerian universities do not always find their way in there.
How has that divide remained insurmountable, in spite of the proliferation of private universities?
That divide is quite huge. It may also surprise you to know that private universities are not doing anything different from what we are doing. The same lecturers who teach in state or federal universities are still the ones who go to lecture there. The only difference is that these universities are more interested in generating more income for themselves, not about solving the educational problems of the country. That is why the education issue may not really change.
And the solution…?
It is all the fault of the government. Why should you go to Lafia and establish a federal university for political reasons when all you have to do is channel the resources into the state university expand the faculties, build more infrastructures? Ideally, federal universities admit less than 1000 candidates but spend more than N40bn annually. Why not invest that much in the state university and increase the in-take to 20,000? When this is done, it takes away the pressure of catering for the tertiary institute y the state government and helps them to concentrate more on primary education.
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