Finally, the hundreds of students stranded at the University of Abuja, unable to graduate several years after completing their courses of study, now know their fate. The federal government on Tuesday wielded the big stick against the management of the university when it ordered the immediate suspension of four of its contentious programmes - medicine, veterinary medicine, engineering and agriculture.

Why it took this long for government to respond to the outcry from parents who had invested much in their children without seeing an end result; students who in all innocence saw the courses in the Unified Tertiary Matriculations Examination (UTME) and applied; and concerned stakeholders who have since been crying foul, is something to ponder? Was the government asleep when medical students protested severally and the media was awash with the story? Again, another avenue presented itself through the visitation panels to federal universities, yet government showed no inclination to suspend the programmes when the white paper report was released.

In any case, how are the poor students going to be compensated for the extra years they have put in the university for no fault of theirs but for a poor management decision by the former Vice Chancellor, Professor NuhuYaqub, to establish arbitrarily all four faculties in a day sometime in 2005, without consultation with the National Universities Commission. It was further complicated by the current Vice Chancellor, Professor James Adelabu, who refused to take decisive steps on how to tackle the problem but was always quick at any given opportunity to point out that it was his predecessor’s mistake.

The Minister of Education, Professor Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa’i, on Tuesday stole the shine from the federal government’s Committee on the Needs Assessment of Nigerian Universities (CNANU) which had just briefed the media that 13 out of the 21 teams sent by the main committee to verify information submitted by vice-chancellors had submitted their preliminary reports. Ironically, it was the preliminary report from the University of Abuja team and to hazard a guess, non-verbal reports from the Chairman of CNANU, Professor Mahmood Yakubu who visited the university, that prompted her to act. Again, why did it have to take this committee to make the scales to fall off her eyes is worth finding out. It could again be because the team was led by none other than her Special Assistant Professor Sagir Abbas.

Prof Ruqayyatu’s reason for suspending the university’s programmes was not any different from what stakeholders, even the NUC which is the regulatory body, had advised at the time the crisis was at its peak in 2009.

Her words: “Consequently, in order to protect the quality of our university education system, Federal Ministry of Education hereby directs that the four programmes: medicine, veterinary medicine, engineering and agriculture medicine, veterinary medicine, engineering and agriculture are suspended forthwith while all new admissions into these programmes remain suspended.”

She went further to direct that, “JAMB and NUC should work out modalities for redistributing the students already admitted into the four programmes to other universities where these programmes have full accreditation. Alternatively, the University of Abuja should absorb the affected students into interrelated degree programmes that have already been accredited in the university.”

It should not be surprising to the university management that this happened even though the vice-chancellor, Professor Adelabu, seemed lackadaisical when the needs assessment committee visited last week. After touring the main campus and the emotions of journalists had risen after meeting eye to eye with the injustice meted out to students, his reply to a simple question, “What is the fate of these students?” couldn’t have been more nonchalant.

“We are putting everything in place so that we can call for accreditation. You cannot give time of graduation when you have buildings under construction,” he said.

It is important to recap what the committee saw which may have put the university management in the bad books of the Federal Government. First, one would expect that University of Abuja, being very close to the seat of power, to be a model for other universities, but this is far from it. Instead, the 22-year-old university is expanding at a snail’s pace to the detriment of its students and the nation.

Or how do you explain the absence of a functional library in a university which ought to be research driven? How do you explain a university without an ICT centre for students? The only computer I saw was in the vice-chancellors office; he had a big desktop on his table. How do you also explain the presence of plastic chairs and tables in a university for students use? Then even with ongoing construction on many of the buildings, the structures are poorly done, according to expert assessment.

In the faculty of engineering where there are 35 lecturers catering for 400 students, some of the students were graduated illegally when the course was yet to be accredited. From what we saw, the course was far from getting the attention of NUC because the workshop is nothing different from what you would find in a poorly equipped technical college. In the faculty of veterinary medicine, students who ought to have spent five years for a course are now in their eighth year because they cannot graduate and one of the requirements which could aid accreditation is a Veterinary Teaching Hospital Complex. A taskforce has only just submitted the proposed drawing to council and its cost implications, knowing the bureaucratic process and politics attached to such projects it might take a long time to actualise. Again, there are 35 lecturers in the faculty for about 100 students.

If the federal government had been more proactive in the management of its tertiary institutions, perhaps the state of decay which currently exists could have been averted. This needs assessment committee, is the reason why the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) sheathed its swords for now. Government has agreed it would pump more funds into our universities but it says it wants to know what it is funding. In the past, funding was of generic nature; universities just got money and spent it on what they felt were their needs. This time, government is sort of saying, let us first know the state of these universities, identify their specific and peculiar problems and then find how we can solve them.

As much as this principle is noble, one foresees the outcome not turning out in the favour of ASUU. Already, the reports coming from some of the teams are indicating that the improved funding the union has continuously cried about may just be a symptom of the real problem.

Major issues raised in the preliminary reports have nothing to do with funding, like disregard on the part of management to manage resources prudently, administrative ineptitude and non-adherence to carrying capacity policy.

These visits cast a new light on the problems in our universities. ASUU has over time identified funding as the major challenge, but it is beyond that. For example, in the University of Abuja, was it government that asked them to establish four programmes illegally? Is it also government that should come and maintain the structures? Are poorly executed contracts also the fault of government?

But the universities must be commended for heeding to the advice of the committee which specifically said it did not want window dressing and just wanted the universities to present themselves “in their unclothedness” to borrow an expression from the CNANU Chairman, Professor Mahmmod Yakubu.

At least there is something government has done right with its intervention in universities through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TET Fund). Without their high impact projects, the universities would have been worse off. In both the University of Abuja and Nasarawa State University which the committee visited, TET Fund projects were the most impressive. There is also funding for academic development of staff which has seen many lecturers leaving the shores of this country to improve themselves. Why this is not telling on the quality of graduates churned out of our universities, though, is a matter for another day.

culled from: http://www.dailytrust.com.ng/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=159030:finally-a-decision-on-university-of-abuja&catid=13:education&Itemid=31