Host community kicks as management explains plans to scrap courses from ATBU

Rauf Oyewole, Bauchi

Controversy has erupted over the plan of the management of the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi to drop all non-science and non-technology related faculty and programmes from the institution.

Speaking on Tuesday at a press conference, Bauchi State Citizens Forum, which comprises professors, lawyers and activists rejected the plan, describing it as a “regression” and “bad omen” for the institution. The leader of the group, Dr. Abdullahi Yelwa, argued that the university, although as Federal University of Science and Technology, like others in the country should be conventionalised.

Yelwa said that a meeting was held last week with the Institution’s Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) where information on this “most unwelcome” development was relayed to the union as obtained from the VC was a clear testimony to the plan to scrap the programmes.

According to him, “It is glaring that, the thinking of the ATBU leadership is to have such faculties like management sciences closed, thereby denying thousands of prospective students, a sizable number of whom are from Bauchi State, the opportunity to attain university education.”

Meanwhile, the University in a swift reaction, faulted the group for attributing the new plan to the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Ibrahim Hassan Garba, saying that no VC has such power to take such a decision without the instructions from the Council.

The University’s Directorate of Information led by Mr. Zailani Bappa, explained that the Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa had earlier last month invited all federal universities council chairmen to a meeting, demanding that every varsity revert back to establishing mandate.

“Technology university must stick to technology courses, University of agriculture must focus on agriculture and so on. This is what the Federal Government has directed and it is completely misplaced for anybody to say that the ATBU VC is against the University itself, he's against the good people of Bauchi State. This is an initiative of the federal government.

“When the Council returned from Abuja, it related the message to the stakeholders in Bauchi, and I found it disturbing that some of these stakeholders would come out of the meeting and feed the public with misdirected information.”

He added that the allegations of undermining the institute of distance learning was untrue as the policies of the federal government also affected the distance learning programme, which he said arrangements were completed to have commenced.