Drop in financial grant, setback to FCE Yola – Provost

Can you tell us about yourself?My name is Professor Abdul-Mumin Sa’ad, the Provost, Federal College of Education, Yola. I am a professor of sociology, with specialisation in criminology. I attended Teachers College, Yola, and graduated in 1976 as a Grade II Teacher. I did a graduate certificate in education in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and […]

Can you tell us about yourself?
My name is Professor Abdul-Mumin Sa’ad, the Provost, Federal College of Education, Yola. I am a professor of sociology, with specialisation in criminology. I attended Teachers College, Yola, and graduated in 1976 as a Grade II Teacher. I did a graduate certificate in education in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and my first degree in sociology from same university. I graduated in June 1981 with two graduate certificates in sociology and education. After my youth service I took appointment with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the University of Maiduguri as a graduate assistant. One year after, I proceeded for my Masters (M.Phil.) degree in criminology at Cambridge University, England, which I obtained in 1984.  A year later I got admission into University of Susex, England, for a doctorate degree (D.Phil.) in sociology with specialisation in sociology of law, and graduated in 1989. I am from Jalingo, the Taraba State capital, born to the family of the late Waziri of Jalingo, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar. I am a younger brother to Professor Abubakar Sa’ad, the historian. I am married with four children, three males and one female. I assumed duty as the provost of the college three years ago. I am currently on leave of absence from University of Maiduguri.
FCE Yola has recently matriculated first set of undergraduate students for degree programmes. What is the propelling force to ensure that this dream of about 15 years is actualised?
I always want to make a mark wherever I go.  It is my principle that wherever I go, I try to select two to three things that if I am able to accomplish, people will forever remember me for those good things. During my interview for the post of the provost of this college, one of the things I told the interview panel was that I was really surprised that the Federal College of Education, Yola, which has been in existence since 1974, has not started running degree programmes. My mission was therefore to make sure that we start running degree programmes in this college. I thought this was going to happen in my first year but I realised that there were several bottlenecks. The facilities, structures and the human capacity to actually implement the programme were not in place as required.  We had to embark on reconstruction projects in the area of laboratories, classrooms, hostels and so on. There were also financial challenges. This almost discouraged me but I had to keep mentioning the degree programmes at almost every forum so that it became a challenge to me that there was no way I could back out.
What degree courses are now offered?
The degree programmes started in the 2014/2015 session. We have commenced with nine courses. Five in the school of sciences, two in the arts and social sciences, two in school of languages and one in school of vocational education. To be specific, in the sciences we have: mathematics, chemistry, biology, physical education and health education. In the arts and social sciences we have Islamic studies. In languages, we have English and Arabic languages while in vocational education, we have agriculture. Our intention, originally, was to start in about 20 programmes. These were trimmed to nine by a visitation panel from our parent university, University of Maiduguri. Fortunately, the accreditation team that came from National Universities Commission accredited all the nine for us to start with.
How prepared is the college to sustain these programmes?
The college’s management now wants to sustain the degree programmes. We are embarking on massive construction and rehabilitation to ensure that we get approval to introduce four to five more degree programmes within the next three years and admit more NCE students who will later feed into the degree programmes. We are striving to increase our staff strength and improve standards. At the moment we have enlisted the assistance of visiting lecturers from the University of Maiduguri. I believe in the next two to three years we may not need to depend on visiting lecturers.
What are your modest achievements so far?
Within one month, we were able to drill more boreholes and improve on water supply systems around the college. We run our generating sets from 10:00am to 4:00pm as well as from 7:00 pm to 10:00pm during examination period. We now have better equipped classrooms (some of which have been turned into e-classrooms) and modern sciences laboratories. A multi-media modern Language laboratory has now replaced the hitherto archaic laboratory. A modern multi-media micro-teaching laboratory complex has almost been completed to replace the Centre for Education Technology. We have completed the school of vocational education complex, school of education and part of school of languages, phase 1 of the school of sciences complex. To engage students and staff alike in creative past-time, we undertook massive renovation of our sport facilities. We have established a very robust e-library section. We now process our examinations results electronically and make them available to students online.  
What are the major challenges of the college?
We don’t have enough money to employ the teachers we need.  Those we have employed and trained up to PhD level tend to move to state and federal universities. Probably with the establishment of the degree programmes, our PhD holders will find it worthy to stay and teach the degree students as well as the NCE students. We appeal to the federal government to increase our personnel grant so that we can employ more teachers, especially senior lecturers. Another challenge is the dwindling overhead grant. Our overhead grant has been dropping every year from N74m in 2011 to only N42m in 2015. If the trend is not reversed, the Federal College of Education, Yola, may finally be grounded.
How do you tackle this problem?
The colleges of education, generally, are not well funded. People prefer to go to the universities or polytechnics. This may be the reason for the poor funding. The amounts we charge students are nothing but service charges, not school fees, which is the only way to generate revenue. To be able to improve our revenue, we established consultancy services. Colleges of education have the lowest grant, compared with the universities and polytechnics.
Is the insurgency affecting the college’s enrolment?
The insurgency has affected us, especially in the last two years. In 2011/2012 and 2012/2013 the Federal College of Education, Yola, was among the 10 most preferred colleges of education nationwide. In 2013/2014, however, we were nowhere to be found among the 10 most preferred colleges of education. But we are now witnessing an upsurge in persons seeking admission into the college because of the degree programme we have started. We thought the insurgency will be a hindrance to our target of 400 students, but to our surprise over 2, 000 applied for admission. Currently we have admitted 400 and registered 399 students with only one student who did not come.
Dearth of teachers is another problem affecting colleges of education. How is this particular problem affecting your college?
It affects us because the present teachers are tasking themselves to make sure that our set standards are maintained. One way we are trying to tackle this problem is to resort to visiting and part-time lecturers to ease the workload on our permanent teachers.

Colleges of education are accused of producing half-baked teachers. What can you say about this allegation?
The Federal College of Education, Yola, is one out of many colleges that do not compromise standards. We observe standards in terms of the contents of the curriculum, period needed to graduate the students and, in addition, our teaching practice lasts a semester and we have been getting positive responses from the schools that we post our students for teaching practice. Of course, there is limit to what one can do to a poor raw material. Certainly, some of them will have to get out of the college half-baked but they are negligible.  Even though they surprisingly have all the required qualifications to be admitted, yet we find them very difficult to train.  

Do you agree that colleges of education recruit unqualified teachers to gain cheap labour?
This is totally untrue in FCE-Yola. All our teachers have teaching qualification. There are those whose major courses are not education but they have undertaken a post-graduate diploma in education.
What call can you make in respect of interventions, capacity building of staff and infrastructure?
Well, the TETFund has been able to provide funds for training of staff, especially teaching staff. This is a commendable effort. But the federal government should also assist educational institutions with additional grant for human resource development. As for infrastructural development, the federal government should increase our capital allocation and ensure 100% release instead of reducing it and releasing only 35%-40% in each year’s budget.
What legacy do you intend to leave?
I want to be recognised as one of the best, not only in the country but internationally, in terms of academic performance and infrastructural development. I also want to leave this college as the most disciplined intuition.