Mallam Adamu Adamu is one of the most prolific writers of our time who was consistently passionate about the predicament of tertiary education in Nigeria. He dedicated his columns to the advancement of the ASUU struggles, through the 2000s, most pungent was his, ‘Why ASUU is always on strike’ of 15th, November 2013. Generally considered a polyglot, Adamu Adamu had Mr. President’s confidence, that in appointing him as education minister, he would take the assignment with courage and make the difference, having x-rayed the education quagmire over and over again, with President Muhammadu Buhari knowing Adamu Adamu to be steadfast and prudent.
Since his appointment as education minister, Adamu has not relented in consolidating on the development of tertiary education in the country. Under Mallam Adamu’s tenure, the federal government has established 21 new tertiary institutions – seven universities, eight polytechnics, and six colleges of education – with a take off grant of N48 billion. This is one of his most outstanding achievements as education minister. Understanding the scope and volume of what has been achieved within this period that goes beyond establishment of new institutions, is a breakdown into components where the education ministry has done creditably.
Such areas include the development of academic staff, where a total of 21,000 staff of Tetfund beneficiary institutions including public universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education, were sponsored for further studies, both locally and overseas. This was under the flagship Tetfund scholarship for academic staff. This accounts for 60% of the nearly 37,000 beneficiaries of the Tetfund since its inception in 2011. A similar 42,544 staff of tertiary institutions were sponsored for various academic, learned and professional conferences, both home and overseas. This cost N21.9 billion. Under this same period, 75,626 teaching practice supervision were sponsored, to promote hands-on training and practical experience.
Mallam Adamu also ensured that there was a consistent provision of essential physical Infrastructure, to facilitate and improve teaching and learning, across the nation’s public tertiary institutions. The various intervention lines include, physical infrastructure and programme upgrade, equipment fabrication, project maintenance, development of entrepreneurship centres, special high impact projects, and, of course, zonal and special interventions.
From 2015 to 2022, N556 billion was allocated to universities, N266 billion to polytechnics, and N215 billion to colleges of education. There was remarkable progress in the volume of allocations and disbursement of funds which is one of the hallmarks of the Buhari administration. The minister’s unique style of unobstructive facilitation contributed immensely to this achievement.
Research is being accorded the priority attention it deserves. The Tetfund has witnessed tremendous improvements in its contributions to nation-building. This is in respect to driving research activities at the nation’s ivory towers with a view to stimulating research culture, innovation, and inventions. The fund was able to inject N17 billion in different research projects despite the Covid-19 pandemic, both at the level of the beneficiary institutions, under the Institution Based Research (IBR) and the National Research Fund (NRF) interventions.
This caused for the naming of Tetfund as Nigeria’s role model intervention agency, and as the first Nigerian Institution to join the Commonwealth Science Granting Council. There was also the novel achievement of developing a trial vaccine for Covid-19 by a consortium of Nigerian Research Institutions.
Libraries in tertiary institutions also received due attention during Mallam Adamu’s tenure as education minister. N43.7 billion was spent in the development of libraries, and procurement of materials, with N8.5 billion spent in the conversion of 1,541 academic manuscripts into books. A notable approach under this period is the pragmatic response in equipping the nation’s tertiary institutions to adapt to the new learning models using ICT. 77 universities were covered in the 2016 to 2018 ICT support intervention. 58 polytechnics were also covered while 64 colleges of education were covered by the intervention.
Under Mallam Adamu’s stewardship, $600 million facility was secured from the World Bank under the Better Education Service Delivery for All, BESDFA, to help 17 states across the country enroll over 2 million pupils into schools. Out of school children under this programme drastically reduced from 10.1 million to 6.9 million. Even though primary education is under the purview of state governments, the Federal Ministry of Education has done creditably in this regard too.
A mass literacy campaign was launched where a code of conduct for learning centres in adult and non formal education was consequently developed. The National Commission for Nomadic Education was instrumental in the development of training manuals, and the training of nomadic extension agents. Eight years can sound like such a long period of time but today, it’s almost eight years of Mallam Adamu’s remarkable tenure as education minister. He sure has racked up a lot of achievements in such little time. It is no doubt that if we have a continuity of giant strides like this in our tertiary education sector, we will all be the better for it.
Tahir is Talban Bauchi.
Adamu Adamu: Salient strides in transformation of tertiary education
