Vice-Chancellor of the University of Abuja, Professor Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah, has initiated consultations with deans and heads of various departments and faculties to help implement highly strategic measures aimed at improving services, staff/students relations and academic standards to make the institution a leading university in the country.
The initiative which also involves fact-finding visits to faculties, departments, the inspection of facilities and meetings with the general staff has already started yielding positive results with the recent signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with a foreign institution for partnership in various areas of academic development.
Already, the development programme has earned the commendation of deans, who described the exercise as the best step in the effort to return peace and growth to the University of Abuja to help raise the standard of academic activities.
The Memorandum of Understanding was signed with two Chinese universities namely Tianjin Sino-China University of Allied Sciences and Tianjin Railway and Technical and Vocational Studies and the Tianjin Committee for Education to enable the Abuja university to start railway engineering majors.
The Chinese technical partners have undertaken to build and equip state-of-the-art workshops in Abuja and collaborate in the development of the curriculum for the university. Other programmes to be covered under the MOU are robotic engineering, telecommunication engineering, among others.
In an interview on the development initiative and on the vice chancellor’s tour, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Abuja, Professor Yusuf Alli Zoaka remarked that the familiarisation visits of faculties will enable the vice-chancellor to have first-hand knowledge and become acquainted with the problems and challenges of the university without relying on reports from subordinates who may not give him the true picture of events.
He commended the open-minded approach of the new vice-chancellor pointing out that the meetings will also enable Professor Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah to sell his programmes and plans to the university community.
“The vice-chancellor is taking the right step in the right direction and I think it will lead to the improvement of peace, the quality of service and the products of the university.
“We want to commend Professor Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah for starting out well. The deans also commended him for the steps he had taken so far. It is a very good thing to meet the people in their faculties, to ask firsthand questions since that will help in shaping better policies and the improvement of facilities.”
Zo aka remarked that dialogue has emerged as one of the best ways to promote harmonious existence between human beings and expressed the hope that the new vice-chancellor will succeed in the task of reconciling the people and bringing peace back to the university community.
“The policies, programmes and plans that the vice-chancellor has outlined so far are beautiful ones but he requires the cooperation of everyone on campus to make them work. He requires the support of every staff and we are calling on everyone to support him in order to succeed.
“Professor Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah has very beautiful plans for the university but the challenges we might face in trying to make the university one of the best in the world will be about funding,” Zoaka said.
He urged the vice-chancellor to start exploring ways of privatising some operations of the university declaring that no matter how beautiful any plan can be, such plans will fail without proper funding.pix: Professor Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah
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