A university administrator has said that state owned tertiary institutions would become enviable centres of excellence in learning when provided with better funding and greater autonomy than many of them enjoy at the moment. In this exclusive interview by CYRIL MBAH, Professor Sulieman Bala Mohammed, the Vice Chancellor, Nasarawa State University, Keffi, also stated that state universities can become less dependent on monthly allocations by exploring available sources of creating income and increasing Internally Generated Revenue [IGR].
Kindly update us on the challenges that your university has been facing lately.
We faced a lot of challenges especially with the coronavirus pandemic which halted academic activities and led to the closure of schools for over eight months. It started from March 2020 until recently. We just resumed as you can see. It was not easy for us when the schools were shut down. The second challenge we have faced is that of funding but we are working with our government to get over that problem. State universities would actually do better with improved funding.
Has the university looked at any alternative funding processes yet to reduce dependence of government?
Yes. We are working on that already with our partners. We have the Nasarawa State University Consults. We have reorganised the firm for better performance and it is now operating as limited liability company which will enable it perform better. The other areas we are looking at include carrying out research into very critical areas of life so that we can generate knowledge that can be marketed for profit. Private and state government owned universities can do a lot to generate their own funds and reduce dependence of subventions. I am hopeful that the internally generated revenue [IGR] will improve this year.
Look at the problem of cultism and related offences in universities. Has it reduced in this university or is it on the rise?
Cultism has been on the decline in this university and even where it exists, they are underground and this is why we use every opportunity to address the issues by warning students and some staff who are engaged in this practice to desist. We are working with our internal security and the Department of state security to ensure that we stop every form of cultism and other forms of indiscipline on the campuses. Even examination malpractices etc are on the decline.
Sir, the Whistle Blower’s Forum you launched is quite unique. How do you hope to drive it to succeed?
We have put in place several monitoring devices and processes. What we did was to launch a vigorous war against unethical conduct by lecturers and students.
For example, on the side of staff, we are fighting sexual harassment of students, sale of grades and lecturers who do not attend lectures or do their lecture through proxies. For the students we are also fighting their own conduct but we realised that students are often the victims. So, we are working with them to expose lecturers who refuse to obey the rules.
How do you protect the identity of the students who give information to ensure that they are not hunted and attacked?
We protect their identity by informing them that information can be sent anonymously without the informant writing their names or addresses. The information alone is sufficient and we would follow up with investigations into the allegations. Already, we have received a lot of credible reports and we have worked on many of them with huge success.
We are calling on our students to take their studies seriously and remember that each one of left their homes to come to acquire knowledge. Am also calling on lecturers specially to act well as the guardian of their students and attend lectures as agreed with them in their terms of engagement. They should try and respect the rules available or the laws on misconduct will catch-up with the erring ones.