Insurgency: Damaturu College woos students

The Boko Haram insurgency in the North East sent many students home but with calmness returning to the area, some are yet to go back to their respective schools. Dr. Madu Muhammad, the Provost Federal College of Education Technical Potiskum, in this interview, says among other things that the college is safe for learning.   […]

The Boko Haram insurgency in the North East sent many students home but with calmness returning to the area, some are yet to go back to their respective schools. Dr. Madu Muhammad, the Provost Federal College of Education Technical Potiskum, in this interview, says among other things that the college is safe for learning.
 
Many students dropped out of school at the height of Boko Haram insurgency for fear of attack. What is the actual student enrolment now?
Well, we thanked God for the relative peace we are enjoying now. Boko Haram insurgency had affected both students’ enrolment and the college staffing because many employees left. Some were killed and their houses burnt.
Students from other parts of the country left and those admitted by JAMB refused to come. Fortunately however, with the improvement in the security situation, students’ enrolment is picking up and we expect more students from JAMB. We hope they will come and stay.
 
Apart from insecurity what other factors prevent students from coming?
Actually, we don’t have sufficient hostels; therefore it would be difficult for the non-natives to come and stay off campus for fear of attack. So, lack of hostels and insurgency has really limited our capacity seriously.
We have improved greatly in terms of classroom facilities and lecture halls. Insufficient accommodation is the only major problem, so while thanking God for the return of peace, we hope the staff and students will have the courage to come (back) and study.
 
Would you say whether or not these challenges affected your revenue accrual internally?
Well, I may sometimes hesitate to call it Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) because there is slight problem in the way we understand it in the tertiary institutions and how government understands it. All revenues are supposed to be remitted to government treasury. In our own case, every kobo we receive from the students is meant for something, which you have to provide for the students. For example, if you collect money for hostel maintenance, it is meant for that, likewise examination, transcripts and certificate fees.
Also, coupled with the fact that we are in an educationally disadvantaged state where we are trying to convince parents to let their children come to school, if you make the fees high parents cannot afford it. If you also push too hard students may not come, so we have these problems and that makes the issue of IGR a little bit dicey.
That is why we are unable to provide some of the services. I particularly complained of hostels, we don’t have enough and we can’t build a new one, I reached out to people in the town on Public Private Partnership as is obtained in other institutions but nobody came.
 
You must have had your government grants flowing during the insurgency period, what have you done with it?
Honestly, when I came, I met a lot of money that was previously not utilized in our account, but we used the money and sent so many people on training for their master’s degree and PhD within Nigeria and abroad. Some have graduated and resumed duty and we are reaping the benefits.
At the moment, we are constructing a School of Early Child Care Education (ECCE), we constructed a block of eight classrooms, we have rehabilitated the Fine and Applied Arts Department, and we have made provisions for furniture and computers to name but a few. Previously, we built and furnished 750 capacity lecture theatres as well as School of Education Complex. We also built some three blocks of classrooms in the School of Science Education.
We have done a lot of water projects because we had problem with our big borehole, so we sank many boreholes in the school, and we also completed long-standing projects; 1,500 capacity hall in the School of Science, these are some of the things we did.
We are also trying to introduce some programmes such as ECCE, we are proposing a new department in the School of Science, Health Education and we are thinking of starting a School of Languages; all these have been approved by the academic board. We are starting from this session.
We have improved in our admission with about 770 students. We also changed our affiliation from FUT Minna to ATBU Bauchi due to distance and other logistics issues. Our new intake for B.Tech will affiliate with ATBU.