In this interview, the rector, Kaduna Polytechnic, Dr. Mohammed Bello, speaks on his three years of stewardship at the institution, his challenges and achievements and why graduates of the institution are trained to create jobs. He spoke to ISAIAH BENJAMIN.

What has been your experience, three years in the saddle as rector of the institution?

Actually, it has been interesting for me in the past three years as the chief executive of a large polytechnic like this. I came on board at a time the institution was coming out of crisis, part of which we inherited, hence there were so much expectations from me. I was here as a lecturer till 2002. I left and came back in 2012. By the time I came back in 2012, the situation was really bad. Things were not the way they were when I left but we did our best to sustain the peace and to improve on what we saw to make sure things work the way they should and we are making remarkable progress in that regard. We ensure peaceful atmosphere for teaching and learning.

Specifically, what are your achievements in the last three years?

Like I said earlier, we inherited the problem of strike here and there. So the first thing we did was to see how we could jointly maintain peace without which no meaningful development can take place. So immediately we came in, we began a reconciliation process which we have been able to maintain till this time and that is a big achievement as far as I’m concerned. We inherited liabilities of allowances to the union and to the staff, including wrong remittance of deductions and all that. And you know, all these coupled with the decay of the system in terms of facilities in the departments, we had to look at the totality of these things and see what we could do within the limited resources. In order to address all these, we had to first and foremost see how we could address the issues of all the three unions. We then came up with re-engineering how to address them. Of course there was national strike, not just the internal one, but all the same, we made sure that we carried everybody along. We address problems as they come. Even the issue of allowances, we paid right into their accounts without some of them even knowing it.Then looking at the ongoing projects, we are making progress with available capital, some of which are from tax and TETfund. We are trying to see how we can raise additional funds for the completion of the ongoing projects and commencement of other ones. The lecture theatre we have been able to complete is being put to use, students are receiving lectures there now. Another challenge we met and resolved was the issue of furniture in the offices. And we have started putting things in order. We are doing that continuously and we now have modern furniture in offices for teachers as well as good chairs and table for students in all our campuses. Whatever is obtainable in my office is also the right of every lecturer and we started with the chief lecturers. We want to ensure that every lecturer has befitting accommodation because we discovered that when they are comfortable in their offices, they will be able to teach well in the classroom. We also embarked on improvement of teaching facilities particularly the lecture halls including the ones that were completed under my supervision. There are other ones that are still ongoing and we are trying to see how we can go on with proper funding. Unfortunately this equal funding by TETfund is seriously telling on us. The way they fund smaller polytechnics with may be three departments is the same way Kaduna Polytechnic is funded. Kaduna Polytechnic is about the size of six polytechnics especially the new ones, put together. So since it is the same amount they give us all, we have to find other sources. We have to visit organisations to ask what type of manpower they need so we can see where to come in since our economy is demand driven. So we are there until CBN releases about N3.4billion approved for us in 2013 when Sanusi Lamido Sanusi was the governor. It was approved but I really don’t know what went wrong because since that time, it has been the same thing. We conducted interviews, they came to assess the school, we gave them detail analysis. They also invited us to the CBN governor’s office in Abuja. I will like to use this medium to call on the new CBN governor to please refacilitate the work on the polytechnics from the six geopolitical zones. Here in Kaduna Polytechnic, we intend to have a centre of excellence in engineering, which means we need new facilities including ICT and networking in four of our campuses. I think if CBN had released the money, it would have really transformed the institution for more effective service delivery. But unfortunately, the new CBN governor appears not to be fastracking the whole thing, which is contrary to the vision of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, who is interested in technical and vocational training. The board of CBN has approved the intervention fund and I see no reason why the money will not be released for the purpose it was meant for. I want to plead with him to accelerate the process. Now on human development, Kadpoly has trained scores of its staff, up to 64 for PhD and about 92 for masters degrees in various universities in and outside the country. We have been equally embarking on training and retraining of our workforce from time to time on ICT. Continuously, we want to be doing this in order to ensure that our staff are up to date as well as decongest our lecture halls which is the more reason why the CBN intervention fund is important.

Like I said earlier, we don’t play with welfare of our students. Any student’s file that comes to my table is attended to within five minutes. When we came in and saw the state of students’ hostels, we embarked on urban renewal. We built two standard toilets each at the female and male hostels according to what our IGR could deliver. We equally provide them with water and electricity. Of utmost importance is the issue of skill acquisition and entrepreneurial development. When I came in, I said look, as a technical-oriented institution, any applicant that we are admitting into the institution should register for a training. The idea here was that as a technical polytechnic, we are not supposed to produce graduates who will go out with papers and be looking for jobs; they should be the ones that will provide jobs for others. We discussed it extensively and the academic staff approved it. So now, all final year students must register for a skill acquisition programme in the primary programme they are studying. We also have quality control officers to see to it that a big institution like ours is leading in that regard, failure of which will lead to turning out graduates without expected qualities.

I went to Brazil and I discovered that the difference between us and them is that their economy is actually industrial or demand driven while what we do here is supply driven, whether the service is needed or not. So, we want to restructure all that here in Kaduna Polytechnic. To realise that, we have been interfacing with all industries in Kaduna, asking them to collaborate with us. We have been in touch with places like Hamdala Hotel, NNPC, Peugeot and so on. They have technical needs which they want our curriculum to capture. This is to enable us produce graduates in accordance with the needs of the market. As a responsible and responsive institution, we have to ensure that and we have already established the synergy that works.

We have new departments of electronics, welding and fabrication, technology and other departments in petroleum and natural gas which will commence soon without any problem.

At what point are you in the process of conversion to a degree awarding institution?

Yes, we are still working seriously on it by putting modalities for upgrading in place. When I came in, a committee was set up in that direction. It will not be converted into a university of technology, but technical university. We still have the diploma programmes at lower level to supply the students admission requirements for the degree programme and I think it will be a wonderful experience when this is done. And you know we are going to undergo the period of transition though we are trying our best. We hope to get funds to improve on infrastructure. We have the quality staff strength. We just need a little push to have a kind of university we desire. Our students compete favourably with other higher institutions in the country when it comes to entrepreneurship. They recently competed with 40 higher institutions in the country and defeated all of them, including Unilag, University of Ibadan, ABU and the rest of them. They are going to represent Nigeria in a global competition on entrepreneurship in South Africa. It was held in Mexico last year where we came second. So this year, we are not expecting anything less than emerging world number one in entrepreneurship and do the country proud. This is a proof of the quality of training we offer here. One can now imagine what this school will turn into when it is finally converted into a full-fledged degree awarding institution.

How has the management, under your leadership, handled the issue of encroachment on one of your campuses?

Yes, I think at this level I will like to commend our able governor, a very intelligent one for that matter, for his boldness to start the process of land recovery in the state. How can somebody just go and build on public land? We all went through school and if there was no provision for us, we won’t be where we are today. People out of selfishness went and built on lands that are meant for our children forever. So it was actually madness that made the people to go and do that. Kaduna Polytechnic has similar problem at its campus at bypass. We have one thousand acres of land decades ago. We paid compensation. We have the certificate of occupancy and the land was there. Just like ABU that has vast land, the thinking of our founding fathers then was to have a big institution and the vast land was meant for expansion. But as we speak, over 500 acres of that land have been taken away. We confronted the community members. Actually it was a political mission.

Culled From: ;Leadership.ng

APPLY AS A SKILLED WORKER IN CANADA RECRUITMENT

Hello Visitors!

Jobs and similar opportunities like this are listed daily on our platforms, and as such, it is important to take due advantage of that.

Here is how:

View today's jobs