There is justification for NOUN’s graduates to attend law school – VC

Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu is the Vice Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). He explains in this interview why law graduates from the institution should go to Law School. One of the challenges graduates of NOUN are facing at the moment is the non-recognition of their certificates by other universities when they […]

Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu is the Vice Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). He explains in this interview why law graduates from the institution should go to Law School.

One of the challenges graduates of NOUN are facing at the moment is the non-recognition of their certificates by other universities when they seek to progress their studies. What are you doing to address this?
First and foremost, the problem is historical. Around 2005/2006, there seems to have been a lot of misunderstandings, particularly in the Nigerian media, about NOUN. When the university was established in 2003, many people were not sure it was a real university. And the reason why they have that feeling is because people are more familiar with the conventional university that is landlocked. The idea of a university that invests learning in students at home or at workplace is alien, so there were a lot of doubts. This, together with negative reportage by the media, informs the decision of those with negative ideas about NOUN.
We are now trying to counteract that negative perspective by first of all improving our quality and standards within the system by instituting mechanisms that ensure greater transparency and accountability in the system and by creating standard faculty structures which was not on ground before I came in. Another thing we did is to organize elections. Prior to my taking over, deans were appointed by the Vice Chancellor and confirmed by the Senate. But we now organize election to allow people choose who they want so as to create accountability. In May, when we had the election, out of the eight deans that were elected, five of them were women. Now, we have the largest number of women in management positions in any Nigerian university.
This is because we have reached a level where we feel that women can also do it. We have a lot of confidence in what women can do. We have women that are highly intellectual and the fact that they have not been allowed to stand in for election before indicates that they have been suppressed. These are some of the system reforms that will boost confidence in the school. By the time we carry on for six months with these reforms, the signal would have been sent that NOUN is now a qualitative university. We are moving from ‘noun’ to ‘verb.’
 In Open Distant Learning (ODL), students must be committed to their own success. How are you attempting to solve the challenges of support and interactivity which the students are faced with?
We are addressing this through what we call the appointment of facilitators. NOUN currently has 77 study centres throughout Nigeria. In each study centre, there are people called facilitators. They are not permanent employees of NOUN but professors, doctors and academicians attached to study centres based on the request and recommendation of the centre director. If any student needs to interact with someone concerning his studies or anything, such student will meet with the facilitators.
ODL institution by its nature doesn’t have any interactivity as such, but we know that in typical Nigerian situation, people like to see their teachers; people like to talk to somebody, so we created this facilitator facility.
We also have guidance-counselors in every centre. The purpose of these guidance-counselors is to help the student choose the kind of subject combination they will like to do in the place. Facilitators and guidance-counselors are the ones that provide a substitute to the interactivity that occurs in conventional universities.
 How do you develop and circulate adequate, self-instructional study materials and Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs)?
The course materials are developed based on National Universities Commission (NUC) Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards (BMAS). NOUN is 100% compliant with NUC. For the ones that we offer, we get the BMAS from NUC and enhance it, and then we take it back to NUC for approval. That was why they gave us accreditation. Lecturers are now given different courses based on their qualification, training and competence to develop the course materials. All the lecturers throughout NOUN have to develop course materials this is in lieu of face to face interaction with students. And in cases where we don’t have competent lecturers in a particular field and we already have a BMAS for that course, we engage the services of lecturers from other universities. Now, we are getting more of our own lecturers thereby reducing dependency on other places and we are empowering our own lecturers to completely develop the course materials.
Within the next two years, we are hoping to upgrade the course materials from printed to electronic materials. We already produce the study materials in PDF formats which are available and we are very happy that other people are downloading it even though they are not students of NOUN. We see it as part of our own contribution to the body of knowledge.
We will move the course materials to an electronic device which we wish to call i-noun. We will upload all the study course materials the student needs in that device for that year. The following year, we upload until the student finishes. This will solve a lot of problems: it will cut down the cost of printing, storage, transportation of the study course materials, and it will get rid of the problem of students not receiving their study course materials.
One of the challenges you met on ground was law course not being recognized by the Committee for Legal Education, thereby stopping your graduates from progressing to the Nigerian Law School. What is the latest on this issue?
The biggest problem NOUN has been facing is what you have just identified. The reason why they are not allowed to go to Law School is because the Council for Legal Education that regulates entry into law school seems to have convinced itself that NOUN programmes are part-time programmes and that they are also correspondence programmes.
Since our motto says ‘Work & Learn,’ perhaps to the Council for Legal Studies it means our programmes are run on correspondence and part-time basis which do not meet their requirements of studying on residential basis. By the time our students graduated in 2004, they had this problem with the Council. But, we are not a correspondence but an ODL institution and this is the quagmire we are trying to sort out with the Council and they are beginning to understand. We hope before the end of the year we will be able to arrive at something that will get us out of this situation.
In order not to compound issues, we decided to temporarily suspend admission into the programme. This however does not affect the students that are already admitted into the programme. It doesn’t make sense when you have a massive backlog of students that are not cleared and you continue to admit new students.
 There is a general fear among students on the status of their courses’ accreditation by the NUC. What is the general overview of the accreditation status in NOUN?
Over 80% of our programmes in NOUN have full accreditation by the NUC. In fact, we use the accreditation status of the programmes to create faculties and departments. 24 of our programmes/courses have full accreditation. There are other programmes that have undergone what is called resource verification; NUC has sent a team and based on what they see, they seem to be convinced that we can run these programmes so we are now trying to get their full approval for these programmes. Any programme that does not meet up to NUC’s criteria in NOUN is phased out.
 Are you expecting to introduce courses like engineering soon?
Before we get to engineering, they’ve been asking us to introduce new courses and I said no, let us create a centre of excellence with what we have before we start talking of bringing in new ones. We already have a committee set up to look into that. When they submit their report, we will take it from there.
 Where do you want NOUN to be at the end of your tenure?
Higher than where it is now. For instance, I will like to see more international collaborations with other agencies. I will love to see more Nigerians in Diaspora registering with NOUN at the end of my tenure, particularly in West Africa. I want to start from Benin Republic all the way to Senegal. Nigerians who are living in those areas can now register for NOUN programmes. This will generate more funds for us. And if the regulators allow us, we will try to set up study centres in these countries in collaboration with local universities.
 Do you foresee any problem?
Our biggest challenge is funding like everyone else. We understand the economic status of the country and we are trying to manage with what we have now.