When the current Vice Chancellor (VC) of the University of Abuja (UNIABUJA), Professor Michael Adikwu was appointed in 2014, it was at the heat of a bedlam in the University. The academic calendar was never adhered to due to constant disruption of academic activities in the school by student protests or lecturers against management. To prevent the crisis from precipitating into a breakdown of law and order, the entire school was sent on forced vacation by the Federal Government.
One of the major headaches of the school then was the fact that some of its major programmes were not accredited. The National Universities Commission (NUC) had withdrawn accreditation for Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and all Engineering courses in the university following the school’s inability to meet set standards. The institution, however through the approval of the NUC had to transfer its engineering students to other universities. The medical students were not as lucky. Efforts by the then Dr Samuel Ogbemudia-led Governing Council of the University to secure placement for the medical students in other universities had failed.
Following the development, medical students who had spent years studying the yet to be accredited programme decided to cry out through incessant protests. Besides, members of the university’s branch of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSAU) embarked on indefinite strike over alleged unpaid allowances and non-release of the White Paper on the Visitation Panel to the university. The strike had disrupted the conduct of the second semester examinations which led to further series of protest by aggrieved students. The school was eventually shut by Prof. Adelabu.
But when Professor Adikwu – a former lecturer at the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) – came on the saddle, he promised to tackle the myriad of challenges that had convulsed the institution and brought it to its knees. On assumption of office, he pledged that his first assignment would be to restore order by reconciling various factions and interests groups within the academic enclave. He had called on the university community to close ranks and work in harmony to raise the bar of academic standards in the university.
While Adikwu’s stay so far could be said to have returned sanity and academic progress to the institution, a development that culminated in the combined convocation for over 25,000 graduates at the weekend after a seven year period, the same cannot be said of his ability to find ingenious solutions to simple problems that require local content. His decision to export the printing of the University’s certificate to the United Kingdom (UK) calls to question the status and integrity of the university as a centre of research, innovation and excellence. At a pre-convocation media briefing in Abuja, Professor Adikwu told reporters, albeit unabashedly, that the institution went to the United Kingdom to ‘print certificates’. According to him, the new certificates have several security features that would make them “difficult to forget”.
The decision of the VC to print certificates in the UK runs contrary to one of the stated missions of the university which is: “To encourage and promote scholarship and conduct research in all fields of learning and human endeavour. To relate its activities to the social, cultural and economic needs of the people of Nigeria.” Established in 1990, UniAbuja has all it takes to be one of the nation’s universities of choice. Sadly, despite its being embedded within the Federal Capital Territory – the seat of Government – the University due to unexplainable reasons has not been able to prove its mettle in terms of credible academic forays and or beneficial research output. I think one of the problems that should engage the scholarly mind of Professor Adikwu is not the issue of forgeable or unforgeable certificates, but the low rating of the University which has made it unattractive to potential students. Out of 100 universities in Nigeria, according to the NUC’s 2015 ranking, UNIABUJA occupies a distant 61st position. The inability of the University to fully relocate from its temporary site in Gwagwalada to its 11,800 hectares permanent campus ought to give the Professor sleepless nights. Besides, even though Prof. Adikwu, disclosed at a Forum of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja last year that the institution now has full accreditation to offer courses in Agriculture, Engineering and Veterinary Medicine, it is common knowledge that such approvals by the NUC are often ‘provisional’ at best, and dependent on meeting certain criteria in terms of infrastructure and requisite manpower before the accreditation can be made substantive. Be that as it may, the University’s accreditation to run law and microbiology programmes were withdrawn by the NUC because the management overshot its admission quota for the two programmes. According to him, the Council for Legal Education said we should admit 100 students but we were admitting more than 400.
This column finds it difficult to see how printing of common certificates in the UK can contribute in solving the socio-economic need of this country at the moment. Moreover, the authorities of UNIABUJA are not unaware that as a citadel of learning, universities and their eggheads ought to be in the vanguard of proffering solutions to some of the lingering problems facing the society like high graduate unemployment, capital flight and foreign exchange crisis amongst others.
For instance, the problem of unemployment in the country is partly attributed to this kind of behaviour where products are imported with the concomitant effect of exporting the jobs local production would have conferred on the nation. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) had lamented in its 2015 report that unemployment level in the country had risen to 75.9million. It is therefore unfortunate that the University of Abuja would choose to compound our unemployment woes as well as aid capital flight by going to the United Kingdom to print certificates which he so gleefully described as being “superior to money.” Why should our Naira not continue to crash against the Dollar and other foreign currencies like Euro and Pound Sterling when those that should know better are the ones fueling our economic malady?
So, what if forgers overcame the difficulty and succeeded in forging the certificate? Would the university then try making the certificate elsewhere, maybe Mars? The point is that UNIABUJA’s resort to UK production is a bad advertisement for local capacity. Should the move be interpreted to mean that there is no Nigerian firm with the capacity to produce certificates that would be “very difficult to forget”? Perhaps more importantly, the question should be asked: Are there other universities in the country that rely on foreign firms to produce their certificates? UNIABUJA’s direction is not the way to go. The university’s direction is particularly ridiculous because a university is supposed to be a place of thinking and thinkers. If a university cannot think creatively in the interest of local development, it indicates a serious inadequacy. As a tertiary educational institution, it should contribute to making the label “Made in Nigeria” a thing to be proud of. Its thinking on this matter is not something to be proud of.”
In sum therefore, the Federal Government, through its relevant departments in the Ministry of Education, must as a matter of urgency investigate this wanton waste of scarce resources, sacrilegious condemnation of things “Made in Nigeria” and unworthy precedent already laid for its teaming students and the future generation by the authorities of the UNIABUJA. This call for probe must of necessity be extended to other institutions of higher learning in this country that continue to sabotage the genuine efforts of government and subvert the genuine desire for self reliance by Nigerians through atrocities such as this.
Source: Leadership news.
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