Professor Abdulrasheed Na’Allah, currently Vice Chancellor of the Kwara State University has emerged from over 120 Professors that applied as Vice Chancellor of the University Abuja (UniAbuja) in the Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory.
The Chairman of the Governing Council of the University, Alhaji Sani Maikudi confirmed the emergence of Professor Abdulrasheed today, June 28, while presenting a letter of appointment to him. The new Vice Chancellor is an the outgoing Vice Chancellor of Kwara State University (KWASU) where his tenure ends in July 2019.
Born in 1962 in Ilorin, Kwara State, the scholar obtained a BA in English from the University of Ilorin in 1988, with a thesis “Dadakuada: the trends in the development of Ilorin traditional oral poetry,” and received M.A. Literature in English from the same university and in 1992.
In 1999, he received his PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, and was subsequently professor and chair of African Studies at Western Illinois University before he became the Vice Chancellor of Kwara State University in Nigeria.
He is the author and co-author of numerous books, but some books of his that are most recent are Globalization, Oral Performance, and African Traditional Poetry (Palgrave Macmillan, March 2018), African Discourse in Islam, Oral Traditions, and Performance (Routledge, 2010) and Africanity, Islamicity, and Performativity: Identity in the House of Ilorin (Bayreuth African Studies, 2009), and edited a poetry book, Obama-Mentum: An Anthology of Transformational Poetry.
Professor Na’Allah has been nominated for and received numerous awards, including the Gold Key Recognition Award, University of Alberta Student Union, 1998; the Graduate Student Service Award, GSA, University of Alberta; The Alberta Heritage Charles S Noble Award for Student Leadership, 1998, the Province of Alberta, Canada; and the Black Achievements Award, Post-Secondary—Scholastic, 1998, the Black Achievement Awards Society of Alberta.
Professor Na’Allah is the author and co-author of numerous books, including: coauthor with Ladan Sulaiman and Ahmad Sambo, Functional Literacy Primer in Hausa, sponsored by the European Economic Commission and Federal Government of Nigeria, 1992; coauthor, Instructors’ Guide to Functional Literacy Primer in Hausa, 1992; coauthor with Bayo Ogunjimi, Introduction to African Oral Literature (Oral Prose), University of Ilorin Press, 1991; author, Introduction to African Oral Literature (1994); and Editor, Ogoni’s Agonies: Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Crisis in Nigeria (Africa World Press, 1998).
He wrote the article on Kwame Anthony Appiah for The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought.
