NSUK has zero tolerance for ethical misconducts – VC

Professor Suleiman Bala Muhammed is the vice chancellor, Nasarawa State University, Keffi (NSUK). In this interview, he   speaks to UJI ABDULLAHI ILIYASU on various issues relating to the university’s   sixth convocation ceremony that was postponed due to COVID-19 pandemic, development of the institution’s faculties, zero tolerance for corrupt practices and sundry issues.   

Faculties of Engineering and Medicine

We have a plan to commence Medicine and Engineering, but there are lots of things we need to put in place as well as approval from the National Universities Commission (NUC), Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria as well as Council of Registered Engineers (COREN). We are working assiduously to ensure that we meet all their requirements.

The goal is to establish Faculty of Engineering and College of Medicine that will be one of the bests in Nigeria and in doing that, we shall not compromise standard.

Our Faculty of Engineering is located at Gudi where moderate facilities are in place such as classrooms with a school structure, halls and hostels and all we need to do is to adjust few things to meet the standard required for engineering like workshops and studios.

We also need to recruit lecturers who will work out the curriculum and who will be there when NUC will be visiting for their verification. In trying to recruit, I have committed myself to following the best practice.

 Best practice is that, you advertise, you shortlist and you interview, and in doing that, you also take approval from relevant organs of government and authorities so that their salaries will not be a problem.

The other issue is equipment. We are working hard to procure the equipment, and we are very confident that before the admission process will commence, we would have procured the equipment, then invite NUC to come for resource verification. Once they are satisfied, they will give us the go-ahead to take off.

We plan to build the College of Medicine on our main campus in Keffi. We have TETFund funding for three years’ annual intervention that runs into N1.3bn. We want to use 80 per cent of that fund to build our College of Medicine.

We have started the process and appointed consultants who are putting together the drawings and the costs.

Our Faculty of Environment has a new building now, the moment they leave for their new building, we are going to designate that place as a take-off site for College of Medicine.

The teaching hospital shall be in the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Keffi. We shall invite relevant regulatory agencies after all facilities have been put in place.

Faculty of Natural and Applied Sciences

We had accreditation in 2019. We put up about 14 courses, six post graduates and eight undergraduates, including courses in Faculty of Science. Computer Science was there, Zoology was there and Molecular Biology was there. The result was out and we scored 100 per cent.

Eleven got full accreditation, so they will not be revisited again until after five years, while three courses had interim accreditation which means that they will revisit the faculty after two or three years.

Our University has a history of taking accreditation seriously because the graduates we are producing are going to work locally and in international markets and there are regulatory agencies for that purpose. Machinery are in place to pass the accreditation for the 24 courses and programmes due this year because we have more facilities in place such as the new library, which has been expanded and can compete with libraries in other Nigerian universities and a new 1000-seater capacity ICT compared favorably with any ICT structure in any Nigerian university.

Faculty of Social Sciences, Administration and Arts

Students are the less powerful actors in the university system and in some cases, they are the victims. Ethical and deviant behaviours contravening regulations by students that can be easily tackled. The rules and regulations are made clear in the student handbook, therefore, if a student commits any misconduct, it is not out of ignorance.

On the other hand, staff issues are more complex because if a staff member engages in sexual harassment, he does not do it in the open and you need a courageous student to report it. theb same applies to money or gratification.

There are so many corrupt practices that staff members are engaged in that you cannot pin-point their victims because they are dealing with willing accomplices. For example, money from a student to up his grades. If the student willingly consented and he paid the lecturer, then there is no victim even though the student is the victim.

We put in place some committees such as; Examination Misconduct Committee, Senior-Staff Disciplinary Committee, Junior Staff Disciplinary Committee, and Student Disciplinary Committee. We have reinvigorated those committees and we have asked them to be ready to work and I can report to you authoritatively that there are some staff we have dealt with by imposing disciplinary action and termination of their appointments.

 Academic affairs division of the university

It is time to change the way and manner the academic affairs division of the university operates because we have a new mantra. People queue up endlessly to apply and get their statements of result and transcripts; that should not be so.

There had been lots of bureaucratic bottlenecks. I have never seen a situation where it is only one person that signs all statements of result as done by the registrar in the old dispensation. In most universities, the statement of results is signed by the Academic Secretary of each arm of the university for PGD, undergraduate, LVT so that when you come to collect the result, your own academic affairs secretary will just sign for you and there will be no delay, that was how we were able to arrest the situation..

The other issue is the transcript. Our results for  100, 200, 300 and 400 levels have been configured in the computer system for ease of assessment.

 But there are some people who have graduated in the last four, five, six, seven and ten years back whose results were not readily available. I say ‘no’ to that. What we did was to computerise and digitalise all the previous results. I set up a task force and I told them to get all the results. I charged the heads of department to get all the results and they got the results ready.

The results were then put into our system and we are following the best practice to process transcripts. You don’t need to come to the university and start wandering all about the university environment queuing up and down. Every 400 Level student will pay fees including transcript fees. Once you need your transcript, you simply log in to our portal and get your transcript. If you want us to send it under confidential cover, all you need to do is to inform us and tell us where to send it to under confidential cover and you are not going to pay a dime in line with international best practices.

Nursery, primary and the proposed secondary school

The primary school is literarily being run as a private school; the university is not contributing anything apart from the building. This is unacceptable.  We have taken steps to correct that. The nursery and primary school recruit their staff, pay and charge school fees on their own. Again, this is not correct. It is indeed against the national policy on education because the basic education supposed to be free. You cannot combine the two by having a public university that has structure and then you have people that are brought in to run private primary and nursery school in it. To me, it is a contraction and it must be corrected.

Before we can even talk of the university secondary school establishment, we have to resolve the issues of the primary and nursery school of the university first.

I sought for the intervention of the chairman of Nasarawa SUBEB to take over the primary and nursery school which will become free. The university will take over the payment of the salaries of the teachers. The school is important to us because it is a demonstration school. We have Faculty of Education and we have students that go for teaching practice.

Pyanku campus, security and lightning

We are aware of the anti-social behaviour at night in the campus and we have tried to provide security and solar panel lights to light everywhere. It is an ongoing process and we are doing more with more halogen lamps mounted everywhere which illuminate the campus at night.

The Pyanku campus is witnessing upgrade. The two block of classrooms were refurbished, the assembly hall renovated and the library revisited. We have now advertised for IJMB students so that activities will commence in that campus.

We have taken security very seriously. We have solved the light problem of the university by connecting the university directly to the 33KVA national grid and there is now electricity supply whenever there is light than ever before.

We have addressed the water system by ensuring that every hostel has a borehole while the government has also supported us by getting us connected back to Akwanga Water Works. In all, the environment is very much conducive for academic teaching and learning.

 Mission and vision of the university

Under my watch, we will ensure that the university system is guided by the tradition, norm, culture and ethics of the 21st century university, where all the organs of the university such as the Council, the Senate, the Congregation, the Faculties, the Departments and the Directorates live up to their responsibilities and work together in synergy and harmony guided by the rule of law, transparency and accountability.

ICT shall henceforth drive teaching and learning, lecturers shall deliver their mandate of teaching, researching, publication, supervising, invigilating, marking and returning the grades as and at when due while students shall be trained to graduate in learning, knowledge and culture.

 In order to achieve all this, we have drawn up a workplan through the various organs of the university to achieve the goals, aims and objectives.

Our mission and vision is clear where we want to take the university in the nearest future. The university will become world-class university that shall train students to stand on their own nationally and internationally.

It is on this note that I thank members of the university community, who have worked very hard in different fields including the committees and in other areas to uplift the name of the university.

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