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In this interview with newsmen, the Vice Chancellor Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU), Bauchi Professor Ibrahim Hassan Garba speaks on various issues including his tenure so far.
By Abdullahi Idris, Bauchi
What are your leadership plans in ensuring sustainable research and development within the university?
Thank you very much for the opportunity. Our plans for ensuring that we have a viable university also sustainable and impactful rested on three tripods; one is to try totally bring the culture of teaching and learning and also total rehabilitation of teaching and learning environment refocusing and rededicating ourselves towards the culture and learning, how are we supposed achieved this, the teaching and learning environment encompasses a lot of things, first students themselves and the mentality you want see in students are they well trained, here we’re training potential leaders and secondly for you to be able to achieved this, we have to look at the environment where the students stay, the hostel facilities itself, the nature of the hostel, what services have they expected to provided in the hostels because the hostel is the content of the university is supposed to give you all round protection.
The hostel is one of the areas where we have taking critical look at, total rehabilitation of the hostel as part of the environment. Secondly, we’re also focusing on total refurbishing and reactivation of the classrooms and equipping them and will be competing with the modern global universities in the techniques of learning. If you take a survey or go round to see the extent of dilapidation of the laboratories and the workshops these are the areas where we’re given much principal attention to, so that we would reactivate the classrooms, the laboratories and the workshops by totally rehabilitating them and bringing in critical elements of modern teaching methods using smart boards for example where we have large theaters or lectures hall we must use modern microphones to deliver lectures and then of course for more effective teaching and learning to equally take place effectively, and at same times you cannot ignored the working conditions of the staff, so as part of rehabilitation and learning we are also upgrading and refocusing our attention on providing decent office equipment for our teeming staff; because offices must be conducive for all staffs to inspire students to be more productive and decent in-terms of learning the required effective skills. So, and the culture of doing practicals not just theory of practicals, the culture of reinstating real capacity building of staffs, you must provide them with adequate capacity building training because the knowledge is dynamic, we’re also looking at building capacity and providing mentorship to academic staff and in tune with the global trends in learning regardless of whatever fields. or professions because it’s not going to be an easy thing, it requires a huge commitment and resources to implement those items l mentioned above.
The university should also be able to thrive innovatively on how to put the university of sound financial footings to be sustained to the path of development. The problems of funding don’t only affect ATBU in Nigeria, but it’s part of our own responsibilities to create ways of sustaining the university and create reliable and sustainable solutions to our problems. We’re also internally looking at how best can we use what we have in developing the university.
Create an initiative and avenues of generating funds to the university.
Thirdly, community relations is very important, there are several aspect of it, how do related with our several staff, students very important because this will help so much in instilling discipline and training in the university therefore it’s going to be a key determinant for action of the students in future, improved the students within the confined of the laws establishing relationship between staff and students as an institution or university where we have zero tolerance to any indecent relationship whether it’s male or female, then how do we relate with the neighboring communities where the university is located. It’s sad for you here the neighboring community where Gubi campus is located 20km away from Bauchi, the highest qualification among the members of the community is NCE, it’s worrisome and key disturbing trends that they are not feeling the impact of the university, either we’re not the right thing by the way of our relationship with them or they’re not doing the right thing by way of understanding our mission, or both of us are not doing the right thing but on our part we are committed to whatever against it, we’re also interface with them, we’re also see to it, and see this university as an avenue of development in their community. We want see the host community here obtaining the certificate of the university, we’re also in an open conversation with some other development partners and we’re trying to establish or organize livelihood related course for the university host communities.
We ban illegal cutting down of trees for charcoal because of environmental degradation, we’re also negotiating with some other external partners bringing courses that has do with alternative sources for livelihood to the host communities, we are also talking with partners in United Kingdom on empowerment training initiatives for youth and women more especially widows, married women in ICT skills to learn the basic skills of information Technology and we are about to sign an MoU towards this as part of the community service the university will provide across Nineteen Northern states of Nigeria. we are also working to set up foundation for human development and sustainable research across the university, and you will not be able to set this foundation successfully where there is no respect for the rule of law, our focus is to ensure that there is complete respect for the rule of law according to appropriate leadership rankings.
How do you see the effects of TETFund In Your Institution?
Go round, there is no building that you see here that were not built by TETFund intervention. Without TETFund we won’t have viable universities in Nigeria, and with the exception of our library built by NNPC. Beyond the buildings TETFund has been doing many other things all the scholars that we currently have in various departments were sponsored by TETFund for their post graduate education, PhD or MSc with TETFund sponsorship, there is no exception in fact in the last 20 years TETFund has been doing this, so without TETFund you can imagine who will be able to send scholars to further their research in post-graduate studies in large numbers to different universities across the world in the diverse field of engineering, Agriculture, medical sciences computing management sciences among others. They equally sponsored us to international conferences. TETFund uses annual interventions for libraries development deliberately for library to become fully developed, same they budgeted to provide ICT interventions to make advancement in ICT infrastructure, in journals to set up career center for interfacing with the students and give them guidance by way of carrying options in their future and the university is currently negotiating with other potential partners in this perspective to provide short courses for entrepreneurship development, so scrapping TETFund will be a bad idea for development.
How did you reached out to stakeholders with regards to bringing more positive impact to the university?
We’re working tirelessly in promoting productivity and development by reaching out to serious stakeholders across the divides in bring more sustainable development initiatives across the university.
What do you want be remembered for?
To leave legacy of excellence, research, innovation development during my tenure as vice chancellor of the university.
Please, give a brief biography.
Born 55 years ago. I started my primary school education in Maiduguri then the North eastern region, by then the time l reached primary five they created Bauchi State. l finished my primary education at Yelwa Practicing School, my secondary education in 1981, l went G.S.S Warji from Forms 1 to 3 by the time l got to Form 3, the government created science secondary schools and technical, so we sat for science exams and we passed and l was transferred to Government science secondary school, Kumo until l finished secretary school in 1984 and in 1987, l went school of Basics studies, ABU, Zaria for my A level. l got admission at University of Maiduguri as Direct Entry candidate in 1989 to 1992 and graduated from university of Maiduguri with the First-Class degree in Biochemistry.
I did my NYSC at newly created Delta State then at NNPC. When June 12 political crisis started. l later joined the services of ATBU Bauchi, April, 8th 1994 and since then as Graduate Assistant and rose to the rank of Professor of Biochemistry in 2012, since then l joined ATBU l never went anywhere on sabbatical, l was two terms Deputy Dean for Faculty of Sciences for years after my time, l was also appointed as DVC Administration where l served for two terms and l have written various research proposals at center for science and entrepreneurship development later appointed Vice Chancellor of the university on October 9th, 2024. l have gone to Europe, India and quite numbers of countries in Africa for like two years during my post-doctoral research in 2010 mostly in one of the most finest laboratories in molecular medicine in Europe, two years after my time, l got funded by EU to English speaking part of Cameroon as health research fellow to study their health systems thereafter I went Cape Town in South Africa still part of the grant and l worked on cancer Biology there and then moved to Germany at Max Planck Institute for Infection, Berlin prior to that, I was a health system research fellow in Northwestern Cameron. I also worked in a University of Cape Town South Africa on cancer biology for my specialty on biochemistry and disease infection, with focused on HIV in particular, malaria and TB fully sponsored by European Union. My worked in Germany focus on Biochemical mechanism on T.B, malaria all founded by European Union. And I was also ventured outside science with special passion on project management, monitoring, and operation management among others. Happily married with kids.
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