Professor Umaru Alaji Pate, the Kaigama of Adamawa has been appointed as the new Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University Kashere in Gombe state.
An alumnus of the Government College Maiduguri from 1976 to 1981, he graduated as the best Arts student.
He is the immediate past and pioneer Dean of the Faculty of Communication, Bayero University, Kano (BUK), and currently the Dean School of Postgraduate Studies of the school.
Before relocating to BUK as a Professor in the Department of Mass Communication, he served as a Professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of Maiduguri where he rose through the ranks beginning as a Graduate Assistant in 1988 to become an Associate Professor in 2002 and full Professor in 2007.
He headed the Mass Communication Department in the University for a total of seven years.
Pate holds a PhD, Master of Philosophy and Bachelor of Arts degrees in Mass Communication obtained in 1997, 1990 and 1987, respectively.
Professor Pate was appointed by UNESCO headquarters in Paris as a Director representing Africa on the six persons Board of Directors of the prestigious International Network of UNESCO Professors in Communication (ORBICOM) with headquarters at the University of Quebec at Montreal, Canada in November 2017.
He has served the UN system in Afghanistan, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Cameroons. He has featured and contributed regularly on national and international media mostly focussing on current affairs. He was also on some committees of the federal and some state governments at different times.
Specifically, he was a member of the Federal Government Committee on the formulation of the National Community Radio Committee under Late Prof Alfred Opubor during the Obasanjo administration. Pate is also a foundational member of the National Community Radio Coalition Committee since 1999. Professor Pate is a senior councillor and ranking Kingmaker in the Adamawa Emirate Council where he is the Kaigamma (Chief of Army Staff).
He chairs the Board of Directors of Pulaaku FM Radio in Yola and serves on several other boards. In his career, he has applied and successfully won grants, at various times, from the Ford Foundation, National Agency for the Control of AIDS, the World Bank, OTI/USAID, UNESCO, Panos Institute of Washington, Friedrich Ebert Foundation of Germany, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and MacArthur Foundation, among others.
Currently, he is managing a US$ 700,000 (N236 Million) grant he successfully competed and won for his Faculty from the MacArthur Foundation of Chicago last year. He is the only scholar in Nigeria, among many others that competed and won the grant for his Faculty in the country.
Professor Pate has over sixty-six national and international publications comprising of journal articles, book chapters, monographs and books published in different parts of the world.
He is a recipient of numerous academic awards and recognitions from many institutions and organizations.
