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| Pro-Chancellor, Baze University, Abuja Dr Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed |
Interview
The Proprietor and Pro-Chancellor, Baze University, Abuja Dr Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, in this interview with AUWAL S. MU'AZU, says the university is providing British-style education at home, among other issues.
How did you manage to attain a Ph.D. degree while serving as a member of the House of Representatives?
I actually completed it while in the House. I started the Ph.D. in 1997. Most of the academic work had been completed before then.
You have a vision of making Baze University a centre of excellence; how far have you gone towards realizing this vision?
It's really a stable achievement to the extent that parents of students who have brought them back from other countries in the world are happy to enrol them here because they see it as a credible option and the students themselves go into these classrooms and come out better learners. This is what I call excellence; this is what we call impacting knowledge. A celebrated case here in the University is when a family had a daughter here who started with us in Part I, while her seniors are going into Part III in another university. The family wanted to bring them to Baze to start from Part I while that girl had gone to Part II. The seniors are in private universities abroad and the family was ready to bring them back here to us because we are also employing expatriates staff from the top 100 universities in the world.
Our research profile is very high and strictly adheres to the supervision of our Lecturers I and Lecturers II. There is no compromise whatsoever as far as the output is concerned. Just take a look at how exams are done: The students walk into the exam hall without even a pen or any other writing material. The space between students is a minimum of 4 square meters and you have 200 students writing one exam with over a dozen invigilators. Nobody writes his or her name or student number on their exam sheets, we use finger prints after checking their ID cards.
So you can see there is zero tolerance on exam fraud. There have only been one attempt which was dealt with: three students were expelled, three extricated for one and four repeated one semester. Also, our academic board is working towards ensuring that exam papers are printed in the morning of exam day. I don't know what their decision is yet but there is a system in which exams papers will be printed inside the exam hall. Things are not this tough in the US, UK and other places because exams fraud is not mature in these places but here it is much matured, so we have to develop all that we can to stop it. As far as our academics are concern, we ensure the best quality.
Can you give us a detail on that. What are the core courses you offer?
we have, for now,faculty of business studies, faculty of information technology and faculty of law. You may wish to know I am not part of the management and I am nowhere close to the Academic Board. We have specialists in all areas. In IT, we have computer science, software engineering and another course. And in business, which is my line, we have accounting, business administration, economics, marketing, banking and finance and some other course. And what the vice-chancellor realised early is that there is a serious communication problem here in Nigeria to an extent that even when the students have understood the subject, giving it back is always a problem for them and there is also a problem for the student managing themselves to getting the right knowledge and assembling the facts together to see them through a particular course.
So we came up with academic skills, so we are not just taking the students from 'O' level to a degree programme. No. We try to transform them in Part I; testing their communication and academics skills as well as use of English and then the general studies, history of ideas, science and technology. I don't think there is any other university that does that in Nigeria. So, the first thing we do at Baze University is to transform an O' Level student into somebody who is going to earn a degree in a particular field and this is done by experts and consultants that we have, at the beck and call of the students.
Why do you pay emphasis on British style and quality of education?
There is an international rating system. The last that we can recall is that the best university in the world is no longer Harvard - it's Cambridge now - and the British University system lays a great deal of emphasis on students' participation. I am not saying the American university is worse off; the American universities are excellent, too, but Nigeria's history - being a former British colony - most of our academic systems are borrowed from the British and they are currently having four of the best top 10 universities in the world. Our senior academics are all British, the vice-chancellor and four other deans. That is why we decided to go for British style and insist on British quality.
Going round the university, there seems to be more female students than males; is there an enrolment preference to that effect?
No, it should be coincidental. Maybe it's the route that y
ou followed while going round; if you come later in the day, you will see the boys all around, too. I think the ratio is just 55 percent females and 45 percent males. And in offering admissions here, religion and state of origin are not considerations, and nobody has any powers to influence admission at Baze University. That is why we prefer online admission process. We only encourage the students to come to the school and meet the staff and see the infrastructure put in place and make up their minds, but a standard JAMB score is required and five O'level credits, including mathematics and English are required.
Another thing about Baze is that, unlike universities like Harvard that can only take in the best and bring out the best, we take not necessarily the best and bring out the best. So there is a lot of value added here, transformation here is more. Other universities in the world would tell students, 'you are not qualified to come in,' but at Baze, so long as you meet the minimum requirement, the rest of the work is for us to do because we know we are capable of doing that work.
Do you conduct post-Ume exams here?
No, we don't. This is because other institutions involved in post-UME, if they will be entirely honest with you, they will tell you it's more of a money making venture to them and surely that is not what Baze is all about. On that basis we decided there will be no post-UME at Baze, but there is a very intensive induction week when they arrive here. What is even more is the presence of security personnel around here. The mishap during the exam that I said earlier - they were caught within few minutes.
Within the hour, a confessional statement was retrieved and the matter dealt with. And to curb use of drugs, we invite NDLEA to give intensive lecture to the students. Guidance and counseling efforts are also elaborated and we have also invited National Encomium Centre and donated a land for them within the university and all the paper work is drawn. On dressing, we encourage a great deal of decency and we have a reasonable percentage of married students studying here. State representation is quite diverse. I don't think there any state in the federation that does not have a representation in Baze. And they happily mix-up freely without bias of religion and ethnicity.
To encourage brilliant students, do you have a scholarship scheme or any form of incentive?
This is a matter for the Academic Board, but I can answer in the affirmative. We are in the second year now but by the third year we will work out modalities of getting admissions for other students in the UK. If they can go for Masters there and possibly come back to us for their Ph.Ds, we will offer them research opportunities here, but in between we need them to have diversities. So we are on that stage of getting international recognition which is very important to us.
The northern part of Nigeria is educationally disadvantaged and not many northerners are known to be interested in investing in education; why did you, a politician, choose to invest in education?
This is a question I have been asked in many ways but I have just three answers for that: first is legacy; education is our family legacy. Our father was an Islamic cleric and he never had any prejudice against western education and he encourage children beyond his own to go to school. The second point is character; if I speak about something I will do something about it, and if I wouldn't, I won't say a word. And the education sector in Nigeria is appalling and I did speak about it. I studied in Nigeria and abroad, so having complained about it, it is in my character to do something about it.
And I'm not in government, so the only thing I can do is use my little resources to see how far it can take me, and God is so kind He has gotten me this far. The last thing is opportunity and, as an economist, I studied that the inefficiency and shortfalls in any sector are identical to the opportunities in it. Like in telecoms I can remember when Nigeria was on the NITEL landlines and all that and we were using the 090. That was creating a big opportunity for the MTNs and the GLOs of the world to break in and cash in, and when they came into it, it was a big revolution. So it's legacy, character and opportunity.
It is also that character that took me to politics, because we are not optimally governed - to say the least - and I decided to go in there and try to make a change.
What is the bane of education business in the Nigerian environment?
Infrastructural challenge, institutional challenge and then I can say the societal challenge. I will take them one by one. About the infrastructural challenge, we had to provide a road leading to this place before the government attempted to come to our rescue. We are providing power through our own power plant and we are providing water. For somebody who wants to go into the education line, this really should not be our concern. Compare with places like the UAE where the government has provided everything, they even rent classrooms - just see how easy it is. But here, you provide everything - from the removal of the top soil and construction of the buildings, to provision of power through diesels and then a power line etc. Infact, there is a great deal of infrastructural challenge.
The second one is the institutional challenge; but as a faithful and loyal servant to the regulatory agencies, there is a limit to what one can say, but all we can say is at Baze University we are faithful and loyal and we will appreciate a more friendly and more result-oriented regulation. It took us one year to get expatriates' quarter permit for 12 staffers; we applied for 30 and they gave us 12. And with regards to the United Nations University ranking, that number will not give us qualification for the best ranking considering the number of staffers we have, and this is in addition to so many other institutional challenges.
The last is the societal challenge.
We are dealing with a large number of people and you face all sorts of situations. Luckily we are very quick to tighten our guard on the academic sphere. There are alsothe issues of drug use, cultism and other social vices, but so far we have not heard of any complaint of student-staff issues and that is because the academic board has designed the system well and if it happens, it will be dealt with immediately. So there are social challenges everywhere and at Baze University we face them and deal with them immediately.
How do you think we can overcome these institutional challenges? Why didn't you address them when you were a legislator?
Let me make a correction: I was a member of the House of Reps for four years and a Senator for seven months. There is a world of difference between a policy maker and a legislator. As a legislator, if you want to pass a simple legislation, it can take you the whole four years and there are records of that happening everyday, unlike an executive policy maker who will just wake up in the morning and say there is law establishing x,y,z commission as a result of that law we hereby decide that a,b,c cannot happen anymore, that is it. The legislature provides that law.
So there is a world of difference really between the two and all the institutional challenges I tell you, none of them has to do with legislation. They are all policies - people waking up in the morning and making them. To me, the ban on faculty of law is a constitutional aberration; if you want to study law, why will someone stop you? It's your fundamental human right and yet an arm of government just bans it. Why on earth will this happen? Though we appreciate efforts being made, to be honest with you, the Nigerian government is not fully helping universities in the country to break through the international ranking. Some of the policies and regulations they come up with tend to pull us back.
You seem to have a taking for arts. While going round the campus we saw lots of paintings adorning the walls; do they have any impact on learning?
Yes, it does. Throughout the corridors, there are live plants to enhance the air and make it cleaner for breathing which has a direct impact with wellbeing, and then emptiness affects the sub-conscious mind in the form of boredom. So we interrupt that boredom by giving the students conceptual thinking to stimulate the brain, in addition to the beauty of them. Medical doctors and psychologists will tell you that all these and more add to comfort.
Source:http://allafrica.com/stories/201203260939.html
How did you manage to attain a Ph.D. degree while serving as a member of the House of Representatives?
I actually completed it while in the House. I started the Ph.D. in 1997. Most of the academic work had been completed before then.
You have a vision of making Baze University a centre of excellence; how far have you gone towards realizing this vision?
It's really a stable achievement to the extent that parents of students who have brought them back from other countries in the world are happy to enrol them here because they see it as a credible option and the students themselves go into these classrooms and come out better learners. This is what I call excellence; this is what we call impacting knowledge. A celebrated case here in the University is when a family had a daughter here who started with us in Part I, while her seniors are going into Part III in another university. The family wanted to bring them to Baze to start from Part I while that girl had gone to Part II. The seniors are in private universities abroad and the family was ready to bring them back here to us because we are also employing expatriates staff from the top 100 universities in the world.
Our research profile is very high and strictly adheres to the supervision of our Lecturers I and Lecturers II. There is no compromise whatsoever as far as the output is concerned. Just take a look at how exams are done: The students walk into the exam hall without even a pen or any other writing material. The space between students is a minimum of 4 square meters and you have 200 students writing one exam with over a dozen invigilators. Nobody writes his or her name or student number on their exam sheets, we use finger prints after checking their ID cards.
So you can see there is zero tolerance on exam fraud. There have only been one attempt which was dealt with: three students were expelled, three extricated for one and four repeated one semester. Also, our academic board is working towards ensuring that exam papers are printed in the morning of exam day. I don't know what their decision is yet but there is a system in which exams papers will be printed inside the exam hall. Things are not this tough in the US, UK and other places because exams fraud is not mature in these places but here it is much matured, so we have to develop all that we can to stop it. As far as our academics are concern, we ensure the best quality.
Can you give us a detail on that. What are the core courses you offer?
we have, for now,faculty of business studies, faculty of information technology and faculty of law. You may wish to know I am not part of the management and I am nowhere close to the Academic Board. We have specialists in all areas. In IT, we have computer science, software engineering and another course. And in business, which is my line, we have accounting, business administration, economics, marketing, banking and finance and some other course. And what the vice-chancellor realised early is that there is a serious communication problem here in Nigeria to an extent that even when the students have understood the subject, giving it back is always a problem for them and there is also a problem for the student managing themselves to getting the right knowledge and assembling the facts together to see them through a particular course.
So we came up with academic skills, so we are not just taking the students from 'O' level to a degree programme. No. We try to transform them in Part I; testing their communication and academics skills as well as use of English and then the general studies, history of ideas, science and technology. I don't think there is any other university that does that in Nigeria. So, the first thing we do at Baze University is to transform an O' Level student into somebody who is going to earn a degree in a particular field and this is done by experts and consultants that we have, at the beck and call of the students.
Why do you pay emphasis on British style and quality of education?
There is an international rating system. The last that we can recall is that the best university in the world is no longer Harvard - it's Cambridge now - and the British University system lays a great deal of emphasis on students' participation. I am not saying the American university is worse off; the American universities are excellent, too, but Nigeria's history - being a former British colony - most of our academic systems are borrowed from the British and they are currently having four of the best top 10 universities in the world. Our senior academics are all British, the vice-chancellor and four other deans. That is why we decided to go for British style and insist on British quality.
Going round the university, there seems to be more female students than males; is there an enrolment preference to that effect?
No, it should be coincidental. Maybe it's the route that y
ou followed while going round; if you come later in the day, you will see the boys all around, too. I think the ratio is just 55 percent females and 45 percent males. And in offering admissions here, religion and state of origin are not considerations, and nobody has any powers to influence admission at Baze University. That is why we prefer online admission process. We only encourage the students to come to the school and meet the staff and see the infrastructure put in place and make up their minds, but a standard JAMB score is required and five O'level credits, including mathematics and English are required.
Another thing about Baze is that, unlike universities like Harvard that can only take in the best and bring out the best, we take not necessarily the best and bring out the best. So there is a lot of value added here, transformation here is more. Other universities in the world would tell students, 'you are not qualified to come in,' but at Baze, so long as you meet the minimum requirement, the rest of the work is for us to do because we know we are capable of doing that work.
Do you conduct post-Ume exams here?
No, we don't. This is because other institutions involved in post-UME, if they will be entirely honest with you, they will tell you it's more of a money making venture to them and surely that is not what Baze is all about. On that basis we decided there will be no post-UME at Baze, but there is a very intensive induction week when they arrive here. What is even more is the presence of security personnel around here. The mishap during the exam that I said earlier - they were caught within few minutes.
Within the hour, a confessional statement was retrieved and the matter dealt with. And to curb use of drugs, we invite NDLEA to give intensive lecture to the students. Guidance and counseling efforts are also elaborated and we have also invited National Encomium Centre and donated a land for them within the university and all the paper work is drawn. On dressing, we encourage a great deal of decency and we have a reasonable percentage of married students studying here. State representation is quite diverse. I don't think there any state in the federation that does not have a representation in Baze. And they happily mix-up freely without bias of religion and ethnicity.
To encourage brilliant students, do you have a scholarship scheme or any form of incentive?
This is a matter for the Academic Board, but I can answer in the affirmative. We are in the second year now but by the third year we will work out modalities of getting admissions for other students in the UK. If they can go for Masters there and possibly come back to us for their Ph.Ds, we will offer them research opportunities here, but in between we need them to have diversities. So we are on that stage of getting international recognition which is very important to us.
The northern part of Nigeria is educationally disadvantaged and not many northerners are known to be interested in investing in education; why did you, a politician, choose to invest in education?
This is a question I have been asked in many ways but I have just three answers for that: first is legacy; education is our family legacy. Our father was an Islamic cleric and he never had any prejudice against western education and he encourage children beyond his own to go to school. The second point is character; if I speak about something I will do something about it, and if I wouldn't, I won't say a word. And the education sector in Nigeria is appalling and I did speak about it. I studied in Nigeria and abroad, so having complained about it, it is in my character to do something about it.
And I'm not in government, so the only thing I can do is use my little resources to see how far it can take me, and God is so kind He has gotten me this far. The last thing is opportunity and, as an economist, I studied that the inefficiency and shortfalls in any sector are identical to the opportunities in it. Like in telecoms I can remember when Nigeria was on the NITEL landlines and all that and we were using the 090. That was creating a big opportunity for the MTNs and the GLOs of the world to break in and cash in, and when they came into it, it was a big revolution. So it's legacy, character and opportunity.
It is also that character that took me to politics, because we are not optimally governed - to say the least - and I decided to go in there and try to make a change.
What is the bane of education business in the Nigerian environment?
Infrastructural challenge, institutional challenge and then I can say the societal challenge. I will take them one by one. About the infrastructural challenge, we had to provide a road leading to this place before the government attempted to come to our rescue. We are providing power through our own power plant and we are providing water. For somebody who wants to go into the education line, this really should not be our concern. Compare with places like the UAE where the government has provided everything, they even rent classrooms - just see how easy it is. But here, you provide everything - from the removal of the top soil and construction of the buildings, to provision of power through diesels and then a power line etc. Infact, there is a great deal of infrastructural challenge.
The second one is the institutional challenge; but as a faithful and loyal servant to the regulatory agencies, there is a limit to what one can say, but all we can say is at Baze University we are faithful and loyal and we will appreciate a more friendly and more result-oriented regulation. It took us one year to get expatriates' quarter permit for 12 staffers; we applied for 30 and they gave us 12. And with regards to the United Nations University ranking, that number will not give us qualification for the best ranking considering the number of staffers we have, and this is in addition to so many other institutional challenges.
The last is the societal challenge.
We are dealing with a large number of people and you face all sorts of situations. Luckily we are very quick to tighten our guard on the academic sphere. There are alsothe issues of drug use, cultism and other social vices, but so far we have not heard of any complaint of student-staff issues and that is because the academic board has designed the system well and if it happens, it will be dealt with immediately. So there are social challenges everywhere and at Baze University we face them and deal with them immediately.
How do you think we can overcome these institutional challenges? Why didn't you address them when you were a legislator?
Let me make a correction: I was a member of the House of Reps for four years and a Senator for seven months. There is a world of difference between a policy maker and a legislator. As a legislator, if you want to pass a simple legislation, it can take you the whole four years and there are records of that happening everyday, unlike an executive policy maker who will just wake up in the morning and say there is law establishing x,y,z commission as a result of that law we hereby decide that a,b,c cannot happen anymore, that is it. The legislature provides that law.
So there is a world of difference really between the two and all the institutional challenges I tell you, none of them has to do with legislation. They are all policies - people waking up in the morning and making them. To me, the ban on faculty of law is a constitutional aberration; if you want to study law, why will someone stop you? It's your fundamental human right and yet an arm of government just bans it. Why on earth will this happen? Though we appreciate efforts being made, to be honest with you, the Nigerian government is not fully helping universities in the country to break through the international ranking. Some of the policies and regulations they come up with tend to pull us back.
You seem to have a taking for arts. While going round the campus we saw lots of paintings adorning the walls; do they have any impact on learning?
Yes, it does. Throughout the corridors, there are live plants to enhance the air and make it cleaner for breathing which has a direct impact with wellbeing, and then emptiness affects the sub-conscious mind in the form of boredom. So we interrupt that boredom by giving the students conceptual thinking to stimulate the brain, in addition to the beauty of them. Medical doctors and psychologists will tell you that all these and more add to comfort.
Source:http://allafrica.com/stories/201203260939.html
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