No prejudice on staff recruitment – VC Dutsin-Ma

You are the pioneer VC of this university, what are your significant achievements? We started academic activities in the 2011/2012 academic year and before taking over the leadership of the university, I had goals that I wanted to achieve. The first was to lay a foundation of a world class university that is driven by […]

You are the pioneer VC of this university, what are your significant achievements?
We started academic activities in the 2011/2012 academic year and before taking over the leadership of the university, I had goals that I wanted to achieve. The first was to lay a foundation of a world class university that is driven by technology. The second goal is to promote excellence and to ensure that in whatever we do, there is equity, justice and fairness. And with few months to go from now, I can look back and say that I have been able to meet this objectives. The university was among the nine that were established and the first to graduate students. We are also ranked number one among the new universities. In fact, the world ranking of universities has placed this university as the 14th best university in Nigeria. So, we have established a world class university and we have trained and developed our staff without depending on any consultant. Our services are technology driven and service delivery is very efficient because we are the only university that releases exams results in two weeks. Students do registration online, processing of exams results is computer based while bursary and library services are online.
The academic programmes we offer here include arts, social sciences, management sciences, sciences, education and agriculture. We are preparing to start engineering and technology programmes next year. In specifics, we have English Language, history, science education, physical and health education, animal and soil sciences, crops and crop protection, fishery, political science, sociology, economics, accounting etc.  All the programmes were accredited by the National Universities Commission (NUC) and our students that have graduated have no problem of mobilization to NYSC.
The academic briefs of the universities have outlined when the various programmes will start and we have just finished with the first phase and going to the second phase, that is why we are bringing in engineering and technology courses. In this phase, law will come on board; in fact the Council and Senate have approved the establishment of these faculties. In the third phase, we are going to have environmental sciences, medicine and other key courses.
How have you been able to get the required number of academic staff to meet the demand of NUC?
Getting academic staff is challenging to most new universities including old universities because some of the old hands were moving to newer places. We faced that challenge, especially at the senior or professorial cadre and what we did to be able to meet NUC accreditation was to attract some senior academics to come on one year sabbatical leave as allowed by the system and others to come as visiting lecturers. NUC allows four of such staff per programme and that was enough considering what we already had on ground.
In terms of physical facilities, the challenge is that we are still at the take- off campus, therefore the facilities here are not excellent that is why we have full accreditation for some programmes and interim accreditation for others. We are confident that before the end of the session, we’d move to the permanent site and when the accreditation team comes in two years, we will have full accreditation. We did well in the areas of staffing and curriculum but had challenges in physical structure.
What is your view on funding and the recent government decision to adopt Single Treasury Account (TSA)?
When the universities were established, the federal government approved the takeoff grants of N1.5 billion for each through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund).  We didn’t have challenges in accessing the funds because we were able to put our paper work together in good time. Government also approved N2 billion for the projects at the permanent sites and the projects are being handled by the ministry of education together with the NUC. The contracts were awarded in Abuja and the contractors were paid there. We would have expected the projects to be delivered now. They were supposed to be delivered in 2013 but there were challenges and they could not be handed over.
On the issue of TSA in which government directed all agencies to comply, at the end of the deadline on September 15, all our funds were swept to Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). In terms of how easy it will be for us to function, it is early to comment because the policy is at the level of implementation and challenges have not even unfolded. The details of how we are going to use the monies have not been released to us. They are still doing some technical work and all we desire is that it should be expedited so that we can get the funds because without those funds, a lot of activities will be grounded. We can’t even buy diesel to run our generators but I believe the policy is for the good of the nation.
We thought universities are not revenue generating centers and should be exempted; we don’t charge tuition fee; the money we get from students is third party money.   In fact in smaller universities like ours, there is no economy of scales, so you have to look for funds elsewhere to be able to deliver services. It is something that is done in developed nations and I believe if we have the structure to do it, it will be good for the country.
There was a petition recently about marginalization in the recruitment exercises conducted by the university…
As a new university, we had a lot of challenges but the complaints about employment were not serious challenges. The most difficult challenge was attracting people especially at the senior cadre to come and work in Dutsin-Ma. A lot of people consider it a hard place to relocate to. Staff that had been established in some places for some years found it difficult to come but for people starting their careers, we did not have any problem. The second challenge has been the laying of necessary infrastructure to be able to run academic programmes. Again, we faced staff housing challenges as well as shortage of schools where staff will send their children to. Many have refused to work with us because of these problems especially at the standard they want.
Now, petitions arise when people think that their expectations are not met and you find them in public institutions like ours. It will interest you to know that 56 per cent of the staff here are from the North-West region and 45.5 per cent are from Katsina State. Benue State, where I come from, has only 12 per cent and so, when people complain about marginalization I will really wonder because this is a federal institution and one state alone is contributing over 40 per cent. May be somebody applied and was not employed and therefore he can author a petition.
 Katsina has more than its fair share of staff distribution and the lion’s share go to Dutsin-Ma local government area followed by Katsina local government. In fact, there are some local government areas that have very little representation and we are trying to address that. We are working with the Federal Character Commission on that. I have a file in my office for petitions and I have even been invited to the National Assembly over employments. Many people apologized to me when they saw the statistics. In fact, many people were attacking me on why the university employed more people from Katsina State and yet, the Katsina people were writing petitions against me. Some of the petitions are from Dutsin-Ma and the staff employed from Dutsin-Ma in the state university are not up to those we employed.
Some lawyers from Dutsin-Ma local government area took me to court over allegation of recruitment bias. They said majority of the staff were from Benue State where I come from. The statistics of staff they attached to the affidavit showed that Katsina has 46 per cent of staff and Benue has 12 per cent. That case had been thrown out.