Bichi technical college prioritises special education
Professor Bashir Muhammad Fagge is the Provost of Federal College of Education (Technical) Bichi. In this interview, he says the institution will establish school of special education for the physically challenged people. How did you meet the institution when you took over as provost this year? Actually, the institution surpassed my imagination. I saw a […]
Professor Bashir Muhammad Fagge is the Provost of Federal College of Education (Technical) Bichi. In this interview, he says the institution will establish school of special education for the physically challenged people.
How did you meet the institution when you took over as provost this year?
Actually, the institution surpassed my imagination. I saw a well-developed college in terms of infrastructure facilities. I also met considerable number of facilities capable of producing graduates in NCE, which I believed I groomed enough as teachers at formative stage of primary education. Also, I met very vibrant and dedicated staff communities enthusiastic towards achievement of goals. The college also has reasonable students’ population. I met 7,000 NCE students and 5,000 other students doing programmes like Post Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE), Pre-NCE and things like that. So that was how I met the college.
FCE (T), as the name implies, is science and technical based. The college is tailored to train teachers in science and technical to teach in primary and junior secondary schools. As a result of that, most courses offered by the college are science and technically based. We have seven schools; School of Vocational Education, where we house Agricultural Education Department as well as Home Economics; then School of Technology, where we house Automobile Education, Building Education, Electrical Electronics Education and Mechanical Education.
All these comprise the college’s school of Technical Education. We also have School of Business Education where we have office technology and other business oriented courses.
We have School of Education which happens to be the mother school which comprises all the education courses and Special Education Department, guidance and counseling and Primary Education Department.
There is also School of Child Care and Primary Education which was made compulsory for all the colleges of education in the country to take care of pre-primary education and how to take care of children before primary education which hitherto is not part of the system in the country. There is also school of General Studies where the general courses are offered -where we teach languages like English, Arabic and there is also plan to introduce French. So these are some of the programmes currently going on in the college. And of course the college has vision to expand the programmes to cater to the need of all the people in the country.
What are your plans?
Actually, our expansion starts in the area of increasing our staff strength. After carefully examining the staff, we noticed lopsidedness, especially in the academic staff. So we are going to recruit competent academic staffs that are going to man such courses like Agriculture, Mechanical, Technical Automobile and Building in particular. We also plan to boost the academic strength by employing more competent academic staff and giving opportunities to the existing staff to improve their capacity by allowing them attend conferences and workshops so that they will be at par with their colleagues across the globe.
We will also look into expansion in terms of number of courses we offer. There are some courses that are very fundamental to the region and host community which we want to introduce. And at the same time we want to expand those that are already there. Those that we want to introduce include Physical and Health Education as well as establishing school of special education that is going to cater for the physically challenged people who we believe should be given equal opportunity as other members of the society.
We see it as very important to have such school to cater for those with special need. So, we want to expand the Department of Special Education to the level of a dedicated School of Education, where a particular type of challenge will form a department.
And those departments will cater for people with such a challenge and by so doing we hope that the college will contribute its quota toward ensuring that each member of the society is adequately taken care of, particular as it affects biology. We have such vision to see the social impact of the college by reducing the despondency in the community, reducing the level of poverty as well as begging and all sorts. So, these are some of the plans.
Personnel training is another important aspect, what are you doing in that area?
The college community is going to express its gratitude to the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) for assisting the college in providing fund for training and conferences especially outside the country. But the college is systematically planning to identify staff that need such trainings and train them locally.
What are your major challenges?
What I consider as a major challenge is that fund doesn’t coming to the college on time. I can remember the college was appropriated the sum of N43m for capital projects and up till now we’ve received only N11m of such appropriation. And even the overhead, the college was appropriated N45m but up till now we are yet to get the fund. We are in December but we are yet to access the appropriated overhead fund for the college. These are some of the major challenges.
Since I took over, I have been grappling with the problem of electricity supply which is quite costly; purchasing diesel to the tune of N1.2 million monthly. Water supply is not adequate. We cannot house 18,000 people without provision of water. And any time there is no water for three hours there is confusion.
The federal government has introduced entrepreneurship courses in tertiary institutions, how has it been in FCE Bichi?
Actually, we have a department for entrepreneurship and all the courses in the college are entrepreneurship related. Like I said, the college is technically based and part of its orientation is to see the application of technical knowledge. In fact, the bedrock of FCE (T) is the ability of the teachers to impact the practical knowledge of a particular skill to the pupil at their formative age. We want to impact a particular skill, for example; automobile, carpentry, building technology and agriculture in terms of Animal Husbandry, Crop Production, Fishery and Home Economic/Management. These are the types of skills that are being transferred to the college graduates who are expected to transfer same to students at their formative age at primary and secondary schools. With such knowledge, students can graduate with a skill to start their lives.
Is the college operating from permanent or temporary site?
The college is currently operating on borrowed premises offered by the Kano State government as far back as 1989. And also, the same Kano State government has made available 640 hectares of land on which the school should form its permanent site. But having had all our development in the last 20 years on the temporary site, we now consider it our main site. But then we want to have a new site and then to maintain both as old and new sites respectively. It is there we are planning to have our future expansion including the Schools of Technology and Vocational Education, Department of Physical Education, gymnasium and a stadium.
On students welfare we are doing what we regard as modest. I took an inspection tour to the student hostels and what I saw was not interesting. I immediately renovated them. We are going to build additional hostels for both male and female students. We are working hard on the sporting infrastructure, we have already purchased sport equipment, and renovated student’s auditorium. We are also working hand in hand with the students to make sure we give them the opportunity to interact with students outside the country. We sponsored them to peace conferences across Africa to ensure that they are up to date with what obtains globally and they could be able to be partners with the management to create a good environment for learning.
What efforts are you making to address social vices like drug abuse?
I can say we are lucky as an institution that such vices like drug abuse and cultism are partly absent due to our location.