Na’Allah: We’ve Made UNIABUJA University of First Choice in Nigeria

The Vice-Chancellor of University of Abuja, Prof. Abdulrasheed Na’Allah, will complete his tenure in June. In this interview with Raheem Akingbolu, he discusses the different factors that shaped his five-year tenure, including how the university emerged as one of the few institutions in Nigeria,  teaching and awarding international master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence

Could you provide an assessment of the university’s progress and development from the time you assumed office to the present, particularly as you approach the end of your tenure?

This is one of the questions I ask myself every day now that I’m about to leave this great university, the great U of A of Nigeria. The truth is that when I came in 2019, I remember that I took over the leadership of this university on July 1, 2019. And I immediately set to work. I conducted some visits to hostels and I almost cried with what I saw. I saw students living in abject squalor. The hostels were so dirty that they could be compared to people living inside gutters. I summoned the courage to peep at the toilets and I was confronted with horrible sights. The remaining campus spaces were as horrible as the so-called new hostels on the main campus. It was tough. Everywhere I went around the campus was an eyesore. It didn’t look like the campus of a university. It was obvious something was missing. I mean, I felt that this is an eminent university. This is a university in the capital of Nigeria. It must be number one by destiny. I call it destiny of location, which is a phrase- that we use now very easily on campus.

So, you had your work cut out for you at the word go?

Yes, I had it cut out for me and I made up my mind that we must change it. I hit the ground running with the mindset that the varsity must be first among equals. Talking about the university’s landscape and aesthetics, it was nothing to write home about. Every building had its own colour, and the colours did not match. The whole thing was just horrible. The academic area was also bad. Many students didn’t register to be students, yet they would take courses. Some will not be in class, and they will be presented to the Senate to graduate. At that moment, I met some suits -I mean, lawsuits- that many former students had filed against the university because they couldn’t find their records.

At that moment, I found out that the university didn’t have a way to ensure everybody was fully registered. One thing with the school system is that if you are admitted or you are an existing student and you don’t register yet, there is always a process to take a year off or whatever. I found so many practices and activities in the university that didn’t  be fit any university status, let alone a great university of the U of A status. 

Some lecturers were not going to classes. I found some temporary appointments everywhere I turned. These sets of temporary staff were hanging around for some terrible dirty assignments for desperate students. Many students perceived certain lecturers as gods or mini gods, even though they were temporary staff. Unfortunately, some of these individuals abused their power, engaging in widespread sexual harassment. Despite the temporary status of most of them, they wielded significant influence on campus, making it difficult for anyone to speak out against them. Students who resisted their advances often faced academic repercussions, such as falling grades.

How did you address those issues? What are the key achievements and developments that you consider significant during your term?

The memory was painful, but it was also a memory that told me of great opportunities that I have to make a change to take this university, to claim its destiny and to take it to a level that will enable our students to be very proud of their university. Also, as we speak today, the staff are very proud of their university, and the nation is very proud of their university. And I meant that in every word of it. I mean, that was really what it was for me because when the student is proud of their university, the university will be flying because they will tell the story. If the staff are proud of the university, they will feel happy, not just because they are academics, but because they will enjoy the true meaning of academics.

In my understanding, being an academic isn’t solely about attending classes, collecting a paycheck, and leaving. Rather, it’s about leveraging one’s connections with industry, securing grants, presenting research globally, and being in demand due to the value they offer. An academic might earn a modest salary, say N300,000, but their impact extends far beyond their paycheck.

I realised early enough that these are some great things that I had to do. So, I started to mobilise. The first thing I did was say – we must have meetings. I remember I had several meetings with the entire staff of the university in the library. We were asking: what was going to be our brand? All the buildings on campus; what must it look like? We have a series of maybe two or three in which we agreed on specifics. Most of the things you see now are things that we all agreed must happen.

What innovations have you implemented, and what reflections do you have regarding the university’s transformation?

I established University Information Relations to manage the university’s image, insisting on its professionalisation. I formed a committee comprising respected media personalities from outside the campus to oversee this endeavour. We advertised widely, inviting staff members to apply with their respective certificates, and ultimately appointed a director, graphic artists, information officers, and a visual expert. I approved the appointments, and they were made. I then brought the issue to the council to convert it into a directorate, which they agreed to. Now, we could appoint a director and establish protocols, including roles for a graphic artist, an information officer, and a visual expert. Everyone had a career path. This was the change we initiated, scrutinising every aspect of the university.

For instance, our internship programme was previously limited to SIWES, sponsored by ITF. I believe our students should engage in internships throughout their university journey, not just during holidays. We’re in the 21st century. You can be doing an internship on weekends, or you can be doing an internship every day, virtually. You can do internships during the holidays. You can do all sorts of internships.

So, I set up a centre and added a student employment scheme to our SIWES programme. That was one of the first actions I took, and we started employing our students. We send them everywhere because our goal is to train them in the idea of work. What is ethics? How do you prepare for an interview? How is an interview done or taken? How do you ensure that you contribute to the workspace? How do you maintain discipline at work? Arrive when you’re supposed to arrive; leave work when you’re supposed to leave. How do you take responsibility, you know, in terms of delivery? All these were part of the goals of student employment. Looking back, I am very grateful to God Almighty. And what I’m saying is far, far low in the level of gratitude that I feel for God.

Prior to your tenure, there was a perception that the University of Abuja had challenges with timely graduation. However, under your leadership, there has been a notable shift, with increased desirability for attendance. What strategies or initiatives do you attribute to this remarkable transformation?

That’s a statement of fact about the university before I came on board. In fact, postgraduate students were no longer coming here. People were going to Nasarawa and other places rather than coming here; even the students here were depressed. Nobody was showing up anymore because when you enrolled as a master’s or PhD student, you’d spend seven or eight years here. Sometimes, you wouldn’t even receive the quality of education you anticipated, compared to what you’d get elsewhere. So, people were leaving. They’d rather go all the way to Nasarawa. Then I asked myself and threw the same question to my team: how can someone in Abuja prefer to travel that far to a state university over a federal university? A university of destiny, a university that’s at the centre of the globe. This is a global university.

Did you say global university?

Yes, you heard me well and we are getting there. For instance, we introduced languages as part of the rudiments for such projection. We said that our students must be trained for global citizenship. We said, pick a language. Is it French? Is it Portuguese? Is it Japanese? Is it whatever? Our students started to feel proud. They started to work on campus. Then we introduced the slogan ‘The University for National Unity’. I thank God almighty because we have a turnaround at my university that so many people are after; they are asking us questions. People want to be our friends.

Today, as I speak to you, we are collaborating nationally and internationally on artificial intelligence. We have a major grant from the European Union for which we teach. We are one of the schools teaching and awarding an international Master’s Degree in Artificial Intelligence. Besides, we also have a Centre for Artificial Intelligence, and as I speak to you, the Federal Government is having some people together to think of an artificial intelligence policy for Nigeria. I am the only vice chancellor there, among numerous other local and international stakeholders. We created a centre and even got an international grant to do digital education.

And I told the centre – I said all the secondary schools in Abuja, all the primary schools in Abuja, all people who need digital education – that is the preoccupation of that centre. We have a centre of competence in digital education on our campus, sponsored globally, you know, so this is the university. Our staff members and students are now respected.

How do you mean respected?

Let me explain. In the previous year, during our December celebration of grants, research, and authorship, we kicked off with just N300 million. At that time, our mobilisation efforts were significant, and we only had N300 million. However, by the time of our latest celebration, we’ve managed to accumulate more, at least in the range of between N3 billion and N4 billion? What we have gotten this year, from January to now is more than N3 billion. So, imagine what will be celebrated by December this year. 

Well, we created the first virtual university during the Coronavirus pandemic that necessitated the sit-at-home order. We created a well-structured virtual classroom system ahead of any public university in this part of the world and this was also sustained during the strike.

What is the idea behind the university’s Centre for Innovation?

Oh, I’m coming to that. We have a centre for innovation in teaching and research, which we created from the beginning. That centre’s job is to train our staff on the use of technology in the classroom. We now have a university for undergraduate research. And for our undergraduates, every semester we have the Undergraduate Research Day, in which we give money to undergraduate students from ours and other schools to go and do research, and we celebrate them.

We now have the Journal for Undergraduate Research. This journal is not just for the University of Abuja; it’s for the whole world. We will be publishing graduate research work in that journal.

It was recently reported that the university has introduced one or two new faculties. Can you shed more light on that?

Yes, but not one and two. In all, I think we have introduced at least four new faculties, several new departments, including the Faculty of Communication, the Faculty of Pharmacy, the Faculty of Environmental Science, the Faculty of Nursing and Allied Sciences. We now have the Department of Aeronautical and Nautical Engineering, the Department of Agricultural Engineering, and the Department of Tourism and Hospitality. We have in the Communications Faculty, Public Relations and Advertising, Journalism  and Media Arts and so on as stand alone courses. We are about to start a new programme in Nuclear Engineering. We have created the Department of Railway Engineering. This is a global one because of the support that we mobilise from China through a global workshop.

So let me say this: Today, our university, both nationally and internationally, is recognised as the University of Eminence, the university that has a strong impact on society, the university that Nigeria can rely upon to deliver. Governments are now inviting us to be part of thinking – the thinking for our nation. We are now being invited to formulate ideas and policies for our nation. We are now winning the confidence of our students, the confidence of our staff, and the confidence of our country.

Our environment has now changed. It has become more beautiful. However, not that we have finished the assignment; we are still doing it, but the kind of environment is totally different from what it was when I came. A lot of projects are still ongoing.  I now have a student activity centre that is almost complete. We have a staff club, which is huge. If you go too close to the staff quarters, I have launched the staff quarters. I just got approval from the Family Homes Fund. It’s a Federal Government Homes Fund project to come and build 250 staff quarters on my campus. They’re going to start this very soon with 100 and then move on. I mean, what else can I ask for? These are enormous glories that God Almighty himself has made.

Parents, students, and other stakeholders often discuss the university’s many accomplishments but there appears to be dissatisfaction with the school’s policy regarding tuition fee increments. Is there any explanation for that?

Well, I can explain it, and if the students are fair to me, they will know that I engage them. After that, any student who wrote to me that; why is this? I explained to him or her individually. Then I wrote to the entire class. We were in danger as a university; we are going to be condemned to the university that would only be within the reach of only the poor, with poor attendance and poor education. We didn’t have money to buy reagents and even the cheapest chemicals for our laboratories. We didn’t have money to do anything – virtually anything. I mean, it was not going to happen yet. Some people were collecting money from students because, when a student comes, he doesn’t know how much he’s going to pay. He’s either going to pay with his money or she’s going to pay with her body. Because of the challenges, some staff were collecting handout money. They were collecting whatever money. I stopped that.

I wrote to students and said, I am going to stop this so that there will be no staff extorting students from such. If students pay anything now, they just do it. It’s not to the knowledge of universities. On this, I worked with the council and we reached a common ground.

I said, okay, every department, tell us what you need to operate, whatever it is, just tell us minimally. Take it to your faculty, let the dean and his or her team meet and decide. Then the dean will submit to the university, and then the council will be invited for ratification. And that was the reason that we had to introduce them because what was coming from the government was abysmally poor and we need to augment it to run the university to be able to compete in today’s educational environment. In a few months for instance, we spend over N100 million on electricity.

Besides, I want us to be competitive with the universities in Adamawa, Yola and other places where they pay millions. In Abuja here, we have private universities where students are paying  millions as tuition fees and in UNIABUJA, most of our students are paying a little above N100,000. For our medical students, their tuition became between N200,000 and N400,000. At the end of the day, it’s not even up to N400,000. But tell me what a medical student pays in some institutions right here in the city. So, my goal was not to make it impossible for them. My goal was to be bold enough as a leader to say I refuse to give inferior education to students. I refuse. If it is a tough decision, I must take it. And I took it. But I carried the student along. I invited the student union. I met NANS here. I met quite a number. I explained it to them. I asked them to compare.

I mean, it’s unfortunate that some people just want to take a certificate. I said, No, you are going to be representing the University of Abuja. I want you to be a better person -to be a great person. That’s why I’m also employing students on campus. I’m also giving them grants. I’m doing all these from whatever I’m able to mobilise. So, sincerely speaking, there’s nothing more than that. There is nothing more than that. It was a very thorough process before we could do that, and I assure you that is part of the success story of this university today.

If your successors were sitting before you, what invaluable advice would you offer them for moving forward?

I would say to him or her, first and foremost, you must prepare yourself to be about God. You must be ready to stand tall. You must be above pettiness. And you must not be controlled by rumours, lies, and innuendos. That’s number one. Number two, it will help you to be a listener. To listen and read between the lines. And when you make up your mind on what is best for this university, don’t shake. Don’t let anybody divert, because people will attack you. They want to divert you. Even though the same people will want to claim the glory after you’ve achieved it, achieving greatness for our university is not easy. Because people will bombard you from every angle. I will tell him that he must remember the entire nation.

UNIABUJA must be diversified. It must be a diverse university where every state is represented. Every state, both in admission and in staffing. If you find any loops, try to correct them. But the standard of this university must be comparable to that of any great university in the world. And it’s good for us as Nigerians because, number one, Nigerians will go to the best school. Nigerians will be proud of it, the same will be enormously proud of it, and the staff will be proud. If you can achieve this, you know, which I have started, I’ve actually laid the foundation for it. I believe that this university will continue, and one day it may take time, but one day everybody will come to reckon with the great U of A of Nigeria.