From Agaju Madugba, Katsina
Sir, how has it been for the past five years that you have been on the saddle of leadership here?
I thank the Almighty Allah for taking me this far. The past five years have been wonderful well and by the grace of God, I think I have done well. When I assumed office, the university had only three faculties running 20 programmes and also only three of the programmes had full accreditation from the National Universities Commission (NUC). But, when I came in, I approached the NUC and they came for resource assessment and then all the remaining 17 programmes got full accreditation. These accreditations made me to request NUC to give us the approval to open the School of Postgraduate Studies (SPGS), which we did, and they came again for resource visitation and all our programmes scored high marks and the NUC gave us the go ahead to start running postgraduate programmes and then after two years, they came for accreditation and all the programmes in postgraduate were accredited and got full accreditation.
After that, I approached the NUC again to increase the quota of our students, which they did, from 500 students to 1800 students as possible quota that the university can admit. And then I also asked all the departments to develop new programmes because we had only 20 programmes which were fully accredited. At the end and as of today, we have more than 80 programmes which are currently running in the university that have full accreditation from the NUC. All these were done within the space of five years and the three faculties now have been increased to 14 faculties, the latest are the Faculties of Health Sciences and Technology and Nursing Sciences. Even the postgraduate programmes which are running in the university because of the number of programmes, we have more than 100 programmes in the school. So, the management decided to upgrade the School of Postgraduate Studies to College of Postgraduate Studies. We also established the Continuing Education Centre (CEC), for those people who may not have the opportunity to come to FUDMA for normal or regular classes. We started with less than 100 people and the Centre kept on improving and increasing in the number of students, so we decided to ask the Senate of the University for approval to convert it to, first, a School and now College of Professional and Continuing Studies and as of today, when the university held the Colleges 6th Matriculation ceremony, there are more than 7000 students in the College.
All these were achieved within the five years of my tenure and now the College has branches in four states of Katsina, Kano, Kaduna and Abuja. This is really an achievement we have gotten and it is so fruitful that many people are approaching the university for it to also open study centres for them in their various states or local governments. Also, when the university started, we had less than 2000 students and as of now, we have more than 40000 students, including the Postgraduate and College of Professional Continuing Studies.
For the number to increase from barely 2000 to 40000, it means people are appreciate what the university is doing. Every student wants to come to the university because FUDMA is the only Federal University that has maintained its academic calendar. For the past five years, the university has not had a break that would warrant skipping of any academic session and also the university is the only one, when students come, they know when they will graduate and also the university is the only one which go along with its academic calendar.
These are some of the things we have achieved in my tenure and also in terms of resources, we have established many resources or built them during the course of five years. We also were able to construct the College of Medical and Health Sciences, Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Engineering. The Faculty of Social Sciences is also under construction. We have also constructed the Faculty of Renewable Natural Resources, Faculty of Agriculture and also many classes and lecture theatres. We have also constructed two hostels and several others are under construction with almost 80 per cent completion and I am hopeful that by the next two to three months, before my tenure elapses, we will be able to complete and furnish and put them to effective use. I definitely think we have done well.
There are reports indicating that FUDMA staff shower encomiums on you over prompt promotions and increased staff welfare. How were you able to accomplish some of these things?
When I came on board, I met a lot of backlog of promotions. So, I made sure all those two to three years backlog of promotions were done in record time. And, in my two to three months in office, the backlogs were cleared. When I put more pressure on our staff to work hard and maintain our academic calendar, I found out that the only thing that will make them work is to motivate them. What is the motivation? We paid salaries regularly. But when it moved to IPPIS, there was nothing we could do on salaries. What is next is the promotion which the staff want and demand and for anybody that works hard, we make sure that their promotion is done as at when due. So, this makes us to ensure that before three months to October, we finished with all the internal applications or processes of promotion and await only those that will go for external assessments. But those that don’t go for external assessments, we make sure that on the 2nd October of each year, we have the A & PC (Appointments & Promotions Committee) meeting, which confirms the promotions and that is how we were able to make them work hard. I think 80 per cent of the professors that are in this university got their promotions during the course of my five years in office and as at now, I can’t say the numbers because even this year, we have 50 people that are going for the professorial cadre and 95 per cent of them have come back positive. Only remaining five per cent that we are awaiting and I am hopeful that they too will come back positive.
These are also part of motivation measures for our staff to work hard. We know the economic situation in the country; not only the country but its almost all over the world. So, we are keen to find out how we can be able to assist our staff, one of which is for them to enjoy this subsidy in the form of paying school fees for biological children of staff. We know the problems we have anytime it comes to paying school fees and some can’t go to some schools because of school fees. This is really unfortunate that and that’s why I said lets us pay half for any staff that has their children in the university. This will help them and ease their burden and also help them to pay regularly as at when due. On the issue of loan, we found out that the increase in the fuel price and many other factors make staff to sometimes abandon their vehicles and if you want someone to come to work early you have to make sure he has a form of transport that is most convenient for them. So, we started paying the loan but for sometimes now, we couldnt continue to pay. But I assure you, by next week, we will continue with the payment and this will continue to be done regularly by the grace of God.
How did you get the funding for some of these projects?
When I came on board, we found out many areas we can generate more money for the university, especially by opening our Consultancy Unit which we give some of our work to do that generate money. Opening of the university farm also help us to generate money. Now, with our Entrepreneurship Development Centre, we are trying to turn it to something that will generate money for the university. We have started with sachet water production and now we want to start bottling it; we have the university farm that is also generating money and then the main source of the IGR is the students registration fees; the Postgraduate, College of Professional Continuing Studies and SIPS as well as the undergraduate students. Although our university has one of the lowest school fees, that notwithstanding, we utilize what we generate to build most of the resources I have mentioned earlier, which I said we have constructed during these five years. We also get intervention from TETFund and also from the yearly budgetary allocation. All of this we enhance them for the developmental aspects of the university.
What informed your decision to pursue arbitration and negotiations in order to dispose of litigation cases against the university?
When I took over, there were a lot of crises in the university. The university had been polarized. So, when I came on board, the first thing I did was to make sure that we brought everyone under the same roof. I taught them all to profess one FUDMA as FUDMA is our university and we have no other university than FUDMA.
So, we must stay here and celebrate FUDMA and make it work. Many of our staff forgot most of the issues and concentrated on moving FUDMA forward. Then on the aspect of people who were aggrieved and had taken the university to court, from students to staff, I invited the Legal Directorate headed by the University Legal and Industrial Relations Officer, which advised the University on the best way to go with the cases. We made sure to call all the other people that are involved and dialogued with them. Dialogue is the main weapon that we can use to achieve or win even wars. If you sit down on a table and discuss, you can understand much better each other’s grievances than going to court. So, under the leadership of Director Legal, we were able to sort out more than 95 per cent of the cases which were all settled out of court and the remaining, we have won many of them in court and this is a very great achievement. Now, we have very few cases remaining which by the grace of God, before I leave office, we will be able to finish with them.
Why did you wait till towards the end of your tenure before embarking on a certain form of restructuring currently ongoing?
This is not the only time we are embarking on restructuring. When I came on board, we did restructure. When you restructure, you observe to see the success you have and any other things which may not bring about that success because anything that you do, there can be merit and demerit. So, the idea is when you restructure, you observe, you monitor and see how far the level of success, how far the level of unsuccessful results you get and measure which one is much more than other. It is only God that is perfect; we as humans are not perfect. So, we can make mistakes.
In restructuring, you can make mistakes, so that is why we give a time frame to observe and monitor, to see if the previous one is good, then you continue working on the aspect that is good and the aspect that is not good, you come again and do another restructuring, to remedy the past mistakes and strengthen the future. That is why now we are restructuring and the restructuring came to me as advice from the Management. You see, whatever we do or any decision we take, is a common decision, whether anybody likes it or not. We talk in the management and many times, what I want is not what we do at the end, because I respect members’ views. I give everybody fair hearing; so once they outnumber my opinion, I agree and do what they want and it comes as a resolution of the management.
I have never been dictatorial either in the management, in the Senate or in any meetings I chair. I give members fair hearing, so our people advise me that, it is high time we restructured; to look at the gains of the previous restructuring and take note of the areas that we have problems, for us to restructure again. So we started from department to department, unit to unit and anything that we did was informed by the advice of the heads of that department or unit. In all, the Registrar, the Bursar, the Librarian, the DVC’s, the Deans, Directors, Heads of Unit and everybody was consulted and involved. I don’t know all the staff of the University; I only know of a few them. So, anything we wanted to do, we ask the heads of the unit or department for advice, to point out the staff that have not been coming to work, they pointed out. To point out the staff that do not have any work to do; even if they come to work, there is no work for them to do, and point out the staff that have been coming to work, to do the available work, they pointed out and from there, the management took a common decision on what to do on these categories of staff. But, to my dismay, anytime I come out, people will say, my HOD said you have done that. This is unacceptable and people should not be doing that because as an administrator or a leader, you take the bull by the horns. Whatever happens, you take responsibility, good or bad. Meanwhile, we took the decision in best interest of the university, so why will you be shy and say this is the person that did it?
In fact, you should just say, it’s a management decision. You are part of the decision, perhaps you suggested we should take A to B and B to C and now you are saying, it is the work of the Vice Chancellor. Honestly, I am not happy with our heads of departments and units and have asked them to take the responsibilities of any action from their departments or units, because a coward should never be a leader.
You introduced a programme under the university’s community services, whereby hawkers and Almajirai pupils are returned to school. For the girl hawkers and others, you offered them admission in the university. What will be the fate of this programme now you A ml are about leaving office as Vice Chancellor?
I am sure and as well praying that whoever comes in as the new Vice Chancellor should be able to continue from where I stopped because this community service should never be abandoned and the ones we have engaged, the community people feel at ease and a sense of belonging. I pray that whoever comes in will continue the programme in the Gender Directorate and in FUDMA SIPS where we train the Almajirai pupils and remove all those girls hawking in the streets and return them back to school.
How have you been able to cope with the issue of insecurity given that FUDMA is located in an area said to have number of bandits?
The issue of peace and security is a collective responsibility. We have all done our best in collaboration with the security agencies and by God’s grace, there has been relative peace under which we operate and recorded some measure of successes. Everybody should continue praying because prayer is the most important thing in this issue. We keep on praying for peace to continue to reign in the school, in Dutsinma community, in Katsina state and Nigeria in general. I think the prayer aspect is the most important thing which keeps us well and alive till now.
What are some of the challenges you have faxed within this period?
Honestly, there were challenges, one of which is the issue of insecurity. The challenge drew us back to the point that no activities can take place in the main campus and anytime a staff or student is kidnapped, I feel the pain and the pain continues until when we get them released. Also, when there is instability, when the school is divided into many camps, this one is for this person and this one is for that person, I feel bad and bitter. However, when we are able to resolve the issue, I feel good.
Another challenge is lack of enough funds to run the affairs of the university which delays progress. But, overall, I thank God for having a successful tenure and history will judge us for what we have done or what successes we have achieved.
What di would you like to be remembered for in FUDMA?
The stability that we have achieved during my tenure, the peace and the increase in numbers of projects that we have done and the increase in the number of staff and students, and the way FUDMA is being cherished by everybody, as one of the best and fast-growing universities in Nigeria. I want to be remembered for all these developments, for these attainments.