Prof Sadiq Abubukar appointment as dean of the school of post graduate studies of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria; in march 2017, he was pioneer vice chancellor Alvan Ikoku university of owerri.
He was also the director national agriculture extension research and liaison services (NAERLS); he in this interview told the education report, about preparation for ABU; to migrate from conventional undergraduate programmes to post graduate studies; research and development.
He also gave reasons why ABU post graduate programme was seen as frustrating; and difficult in the past years by graduates. State of education particularly tertiary institutions has been an area of discussion on by many stakeholders. How do you see the state of affairs of tertiary education presently.
Tertiary education in Nigeria, some are very obvious while many are buried in the system. Let start from the perspective of access .
If I am to be specific with universities, presently have 40 federal universities; 42 state universities 67 private universities; that is a total of 149 universities in the country.
The country of students that sits for jamb every year is up to two million together with polytechnic and colleges of education; and mono techniques, we will have about 500 tertiary institutions.
This clearly shows that the access is very limited in terms of diversity and responding to national need other words. We don’t have spaces at the tertiary level; that can accommodate our children who will become professionals .
This is one key challenge in our system with this number. Am not sure if we can absorb up to 40 percent of these seeking admission; from the turn out from the secondary schools and again. We have also challenge of very narrowly space to train our students; in entrepreneurship skill programme that can supplement the present state of unemployment; after graduation in terms of access.
Nigeria is not doing well. There is need to open up the tertiary education through; this is one of the agenda of the present administration; to increase the access to tertiary education. What is responsible for the delay in students graduation in the past, who is to blame.
If you look at the system carefully you will see that a lot of PG students nowadays enroll because they have no job; so the motivation to be occupied doing something while they start the programme. The pay for the first year one the get job they will abandon the studies; it takes them four or five years to complete a year programme such students no longer see the programs as important .
On the other hand, we don’t have a clear direction on how to monitor the supervision of students; by lecturers at department faculty or senate .
We introduced a supervisory committee from the department to faculty level. As I said measures introduced will now monitor and reduce delay in graduation.
Get Jobs On Telegram