The Deputy Director, Public Affairs of the institution, Malam Auwal Umar, in a statement today, April 30, quoted the new Vice-Chancellor after receiving the handing over notes at the university Senate Chamber from the Acting Vice-Chancellor, Professor Danladi Ameh, as saying that functional academic brief, inability to review the institution’s curricular and lack of master plan among others, as the major challenges facing the university at the moment.
He said that the last time the institution’s curricular was reviewed was in 2012 and that was the very first time the university was able to review its curricula, saying also that the present curricular was due for review in 2017 but nothing was done.
The VC insisted that people looked up to ABU to solve their problems as the institution proffered solutions in the past to challenges faced in agriculture, security and many other sensitive issues.
“We need to do a lot to catch up with the global trend. ABU had never had an academic brief, we don’t have the master plan for long, the last being the one produced in 1982, during the tenure of Prof. Ango Abdullahi. Even the strategic plans we have do not syncronise.
“We have to raise these questions because of ABU’s strategic position.
“Unfortunately, we are now in an academic and intellectual environment where we don’t want to ask questions for fear that we may be tagged as the enemy of the system. All we have now all over is mediocrity.”
“When last did we have our discourse as a university?
“I could vividly remember when government would always rush to ABU to collect the analyses and recommendations after every public discourse organised by the then academics like Dr Yusuf Bala Usman of blessed memory.”
The Vice Chancellor, who expressed gratitude to his predecessor, Professor Ibrahim Garba, for all his good works, said that for the university to be run effectively and efficiently, the committee system had to be revived as a statutory organ of the administration.
Professor Ameh had described the new VC as somebody with vast knowledge of the university, saying: “with Prof Kabir Bala in the saddle the university would fare well”.
“The incoming VC is not a stranger to us as he worked in various places in this university which we all cherish and love. He is a tested hand and so the university will be in a safe hand.”
It would be recalled that the Governing Council of ABU had at its 189th Special Meeting on January 22, 2020 approved the appointment of Bala as new VC of the institution.
Bala, a professor of construction management and the immediate past Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Administration), took over from Prof. Ibrahim Garba whose tenure expired today, April 30. Source: NAN
