The Nation Newspaper

Tag: NOUN VC

  • NOUN VC seeks training for teachers

    THE Vice Chancellor, National Open  University of Nigeria (NOUN), Prof Abdallah Uba Adamu, has said training of teachers must be prioritised for quality and standard to be achieved in basic and secondary educational institutions.

    “This will open window for teachers to be more professional and ready to drive the sector with purpose”, he said.

    Speaking Tuesday in Sokoto at the opening of a three-day workshop for  Head Teachers and Principals of Junior Secondary Schools, Adamu said building teachers’ capacity was critical in view of the growing challenges in the nation’s basic and secondary education levels.

    The workshop held at the auditorium of the Sultan Maccido Institute for Quranic and General Studies  was organised by NOUN in collaboration with the Sokoto State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB).

    However, the workshop is coming on the heels of  a date line issued by NTI for teachers to be professionals.

    According to him, such training would broaden the scope of teachers contributions and  as well strengthen their efforts at delivering quality and standard teaching as professionals.

    “It will also boost and smoothen learning process of pupils”, he said.

    Adamu, who was represented by the DVC Academic, Prof Joy Eyisi, said it was imperative to build teachers capacity to support the drive for attaining development in the education sector.

    “It will guarantee  the success and future of generations,” he said.

    Declaring the workshop open, Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, represented by the Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, Dr Muhammadu Jabbi Kilgori, said the state government had always accorded priority to education through robust approach to ensure quality teaching in schools at all levels.

    “We have made training and retraining for capacity building of teachers a no going back priority.”

    Besides, Tambuwal explained that motivation, teachers’ welfare, and promotion, prompt payment of salaries and provision of basic facilities in schools  were key and dear to his administration.

    “Making all these available would have solved over 70 per cent of the problems.

    “We have also effectively put in place an active monitoring and evaluation mechanism to assess performance for routine reports”, he stated.

    Earlier, the SUBEB Chairman, Alhaji Bello Yusuf Danchadi, disclosed that it had concluded plans to train 3,374  teachers to improve their capacity in teaching and learning.

    According to him, SUBEB accords importance to capacity building for teachers to meet the dynamic challenges, stressing that the training programme in liaison with NTI  would further improve their skills and provide platform for better learning by pupils.

     

     

  • NOUN VC to lawmakers: spread open varsity gospel

    NOUN VC to lawmakers: spread open varsity gospel

    The Vice-Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu, has urged members of the National Assembly to create awareness among their constituents  on the potentials of Open and Distance Learning.

    Adamu gave the advice  during a courtesy visit to the Senator representing Kano North Senatorial Zone at the National Assembly, Abuja, Senator Barau Jibrin.

    The VC said the sensitisation is necessary in view of the need to bring on board young girls and women who, as a result of cultural practices peculiar to their communities, have been denied access to education over the years.

    He explained that such cultural practices had relegated the womenfolk in the northern part of the country to the background and denied them their pride of place in nation-building.

    The Vice-Chancellor said with flexible and affordable education being championed by the university, women now have unfettered access to education and this would help remove prejudices.

    In his  response, Senator Jibrin expressed readiness to partner with the authorities of the university in spreading the potentials inherent in studying through the open and distance learning mode of education among his constituents.

    The Senator, who expressed his interest in the ODL mode of education, disclosed that he had earlier sponsored a bill for a slight amendment of the Act setting up the NOUN in order to further project it as an institution driven by information and communication technology.

     

  • NOUN VC gets ‘Most valuable VC’ Award

    The Vice-Chancellor, National Open University, Prof Vincent Ado Tenebe, has been bestowed this year’s ‘Most Valuable Vice-Chancellor’ Award, by the International Centre for Comparative Leadership for Africans and Blacks in Diaspora in collaboration with Accolade International Magazine.

    The award was presented on the university premises in VI, Lagos by the Chief Executive Officer, CEO Accolade International Magazine, Dr Luke Okojie and the magazine’s Southsouth coordinator, Mr Bode Alake.

    Speaking at the presentation, Tenebe, said he is greatly honoured and humbled by the award. “The award is not for me, but for the NOUN; that is why 50 per cent of my citation is about the university. We are serving with all interest and with the belief that we will salvage the country from its problems concerning education,” he said.

    According to him, NOUN is the only way to take education to beyond borders. He called for more open universities in Africa.

    “Africa is one of the places with high level of insecurity and illiteracy, and education is one of the ways to overcome insecurities. Places with low education have a high level of insecurity. The Northeast in Nigeria for example has low education and high in insurgency so also the Southsouth with militancy.”

    He said NOUN has crops of academics who can salvage Nigeria from its present challenges. He thanked the award donor for the recognition.

    On his part, Dr Okojie said Tenebe deserved the award for his contribution to scholarship and dedication, adding that he is a great leader and an embodiment of success.

  • We produce quality graduates, says NOUN V-C

    We produce quality graduates, says NOUN V-C

    Professor Vincent Ado Tenebe is the Vice-Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). In this interview with TONY AKOWE, he speaks on the institution’s mandate and his achievements in the past four years. Excerpts:

    Many are of the view that graduates of the National Open University of Nigeria will not be accepted for the National Youths Service Corps (NYSC). How true is this?

    The National Open University of Nigeria, like any other university in Nigeria, is a federal university accredited by the National Universities Commission (NUC). We have programmes approved for students to study for their degree in various disciplines up to Ph.D.

    The university has various schools comprising a Post-graduate School, School of Social Sciences, Education, Law and the School of Science and Technology. We have just added the School of Agriculture and School of Health Sciences.

    When you visit our website, you will see other courses like Mass Communications, Economics and English Studies, among others.

    There are various courses that one can study at the Open University. For the reason that open and distance learning system of education is new in Nigeria, people assume that it is another part-time programme.

    Programmes offered at the Open University are not part-time. They are offered on full time basis. One of the things we are trying to push forward is to make Nigerians realise what we are talking about.

    On the issue of eligibility for NYSC, there is no reason to exclude graduates of NOUN who are within the age bracket from the NYSC programme because they have gone through the same curriculum with their counterparts in the conventional universities.

    The only reason for the seeming challenge is that, when the NYSC started in 1973, the Open University system was not in place. At the moment, the NYSC is issuing exemption certificates to all our graduates. But that is not good enough. I foresee a situation where our graduates who are still within the age bracket will be allowed to participate in NYSC after going through a programme of four or five years.

    As for our degrees or certificates, holders of our certificates compete favourably with their counterparts from the conventional universities. Compare our graduates with their counterparts from the conventional universities and you will realise that they are among the best in the country today.

    We are not marketing our graduates for nothing, but we are confident that they are the best. In the next few years, the public will confirm that products of the Open University are the best. So acceptability is not a question at all.

    At the moment, what is the student population of the university?

    When I assumed duty in 2010, the student population of the National Open University of Nigeria had dropped from 32,000 to 16,000. We had to go back to the drawing board and we were able to raise the student population to 53,000 within one semester.

    However, by my last assessment recently, student population stands at 308,000.

    We have just started semester registration and already, 65,000 students have registered. I am confident that the number of students will increase because Nigerians will always wait until they know that examination is around the corner before they start looking for who to beg to allow them register.

    We are still not happy because I set a target for myself that before I leave office next year, God willing, I want to see that the student population of the university hits 500,000. But the target set for this university is that it has 1.5 million students in its enrollment.

    We are the only university in Nigeria that matriculates twice a year. We have students’ registration every semester. We are the only university that democratises education. We allow you to register this semester and next semester you might disappear only to appear in another semester and we will not question you because we have given you that liberty.

    One of the major problems in the world today is cyber crime. Considering that most of your activities are carried out online, what are you doing to ensure that this does not affect your operations?

    It is true that some of our activities like admission, registration and even accessing some of our materials are done online. Since we are aware that we have some technological challenges, we often use the media to reach out to our students. Sometimes, we have network challenges.  We do experience that sometimes and we have to cope with it. We are not different from other organisations that have their operations on online. The banks, security, even the mass media, sometimes have network failure. As regards cyber fraud, we have not experienced that yet because we have put in place strategies to deal with it.

    Nigerians believe that the present administration is not doing enough to improve the education sector.  What is your view on this?

    As an active participant in the educational sector in Nigeria, I can tell you that we are doing our best to ensure that we keep pace with other parts of the world. I do not agree with those who keep saying that the standard of educational in Nigeria has fallen.

    Educational standard has fallen all over the world, not only in Nigeria. The only way to ascertain whether educational standard has fallen in Nigeria or not is to bring together students or graduates from Nigeria and their counterparts from other parts of the world. Give them a test and if the Nigerian graduates perform below average, then it will be established that standard of education has really fallen.

    How many graduates from Nigerian universities have gone abroad for post-graduate studies and are withdrawn because of poor performance? But the story we hear is that they always beat their counterpart abroad because we learn through the hard way and when they go to where there is technology, it becomes so easy for them.

    So, it is not right to give negative information that will portray us in bad light. There are more good things happening in this country. Our educational system is not bad, it is good. I don’t believe that we are not doing well.

    What is the way out of the present educational situation?

    Somebody once asked me why we are still producing graduates when there are no jobs? The primary aim of acquiring education is not for you to get a job. Being educated is to develop your mind. It is to expose you so that you can become an individual that can find your way in life. It is to equip you; and once you are equipped, you can find your way in life.

    The world over, there is no country that does not have unemployment issues. My advice is for the government to encourage open and distance learning because through it, you produce an individual that is creative, who can study on his own, an individual that is self made and an individual that requires minimal supervision. Once that person graduates, he is not going into the streets looking for an employer. He is going to become an employer himself. That is why in the Open University, one of our recent developments is to create an advancement office, through which we are going to encourage entrepreneurship.

    The Open University has been able to acquire a micro-finance bank to ensure that all the students we are to enroll into Open University and are not working are thought how to utilise products offered by our bank to be self-reliant. This will be done in collaboration with our entrepreneurship centre.

    Since our motto is work and learn, once an individual gets admission, we empower that individual to enable him or her to carry out business either in hair salon, photography, or whatever business. Once that individual does business for the period of five years and is paying back the loan given to him or her on schedule, by the time the individual graduates, he is not going for a N50, 000 monthly jobs, because he would have become an employer.

    So, through the Open University system, government can create jobs for unemployed Nigerians.

  • NOUN VC: strikes will soon go extinct

    NOUN VC: strikes will soon go extinct

    Regular disruption of academic programmes in universities will soon be a thing of the past. Vice Chancellor National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Prof Ado Vincent Tenebe, has said.

    In an interview, he said the nation was moving from the traditions that led to strike and would soon get to the learn how to avoid strikes under democratic rule.

    He, however, said that academic programmes of the NOUN were not affected by strikes, pointing out that the resource persons being used are not necessarily permanent workers of the institution.

    While describing the strike as pathetic, Tenebe said: “It is not a thing of joy to say we go through this disruption in academic programme in this country. Having worked in the university industry all my life, I know what this is all about.

    “You know that strikes are not only peculiar to the academics of this country. You find strikes in other sectors too. It’s unfortunate but you know as well as I do that the history behind the strike-unless a strike, you don’t get result.”

    He continued: “But now that we are gradually moving from the traditions that led to striking, to a democratic government, I am sure very soon, we are going to be able to work while we negotiate for whatever that must have brought about striking. We will get there.

    “You will also agree with me that strikes in the academics has not been as frequent as it used to be and this is of course, part of the dividend of democracy. But what my colleagues in the academics are saying is that there was an agreement and if there was an agreement both parties must agree to what they agree to do. And if they disagree, they should also re-negotiate the agreement.”

    He added: “Having said that, you see, in open and distance learning all over the world, there is no provision for strike in the sense that this is a programme that allows you to work and learn. Your resource person is not necessarily a permanent staff. So, “it is only somebody who knows to participate and facilitate with you that will do that willingly and such a person would not come and strike. And because of that we are able to continue. And I must let you know that the bulk of the resources persons utilised in the open universities are all my colleagues in other universities.”

    On the non-accreditation of NOUN’s Nursing programme, Tenebe said, “you see in the Open University, we are completely open. We won’t sit here and lie to the public. We did not make the accreditation in Nursing because there were certain requirements that fell short of accreditation and the NUC showed that to us and we accepted.

    “If you fail accreditation, you are given a particular period to prepare to reapply. We have been given a period of time to reapply for accreditation and that will be very soon because we are ready and waiting for the agency.

    “There is no point for any commotion from students when they find out that their courses are not accredited. Take the best university in the world; accreditation team can come at any time to tell you that a particular course that was accredited before had failed.”

    “Accreditation is something that is not permanent. It comes from time to time. If you pass accreditation, you are given another five years before another accreditation. And I can tell you in 2005 and 2007, Ahmadu Bello University failed accreditation in Accountancy. They reappeared again and got accreditation.

    “ABU that came on board since 1962, do you know how many times they have gone through accreditation? It is a monitoring programme to ensure that standard is being continually maintained. It is not a witch-hunting exercise. It is academic standard and we are passionate about that.”