A university is a citadel of learning and research. The Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in Zaria, Kaduna State, is living up to this billing. It no longer patronises Information Communication Technology (ICT) solution firms for its software needs. It relies on a highly-experienced team of in-house scientists to develop applications that suit its needs. With the team’s success, the university is now providing solutions for other establishments, reports ABDULGAFAR ALABELEWE (Kaduna).
•ABU develops software for self, others
Professor Abdullahi Mustapha will leave office today as vice chancellor (VC) of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in Zaria, Kaduna State, a happy man.
One of the fruits of his five-year labour at the university is the development of about 14 software applications to manage in-house administrative issues.
The project, which started about five years ago, is now contributing substantially to the university’s internally-generated revenue (up to N30 million) by providing ICT solutions for the school and others.
Impressed with its success, the university held a ceremony to launch the software and reward the 25-man team that handled their development penultimate week.
In an interview with The Nation, leader of the software development team Prof Sahalu Junaidu said most of the software were web-based and designed in such a way that they could be used from anywhere by various categories of users, including admission seekers, students and others.
He said: “Now, there are over a dozen software applications that we developed for use by students, academic and non-academic workers and other stakeholders. We have documentation for them. There are e-forms for applicants to apply into the university; we also have software for recruitments; pay easy application (a payment system that enables students/people to make payment when it is due); there is exams logic which is used to process examination results and send them to the student portal. There is also the student portal, the human resource management information system, and one for the alumni to apply for their transcript online, the CBT application and many more.”
The university management assembled the team sometime in 2010 to start the development. Before 2010, the university outsourced most of its ICT solutions need to third party firms. However, now it has started selling software to other institutions.
He said: “At the beginning, the university had outsourced the development of what it called edu-portal for student registration and many other things in 2006. But up to 2009, that portal still had problems. So we that started that earlier development came together and wrote a proposal to the university management that we can develop an alternative edu-portal for the university in-house. We made presentation to university management, they considered and gave us the go ahead; and within five to six months, we came up with that edu-portal that has been used since 2011till today.”
For the outgoing vice chancellor, the team’s ability to produce the software was a relief. He said the lack of ICT solutions was a huge challenge when he took over as vice chancellor.
“When I came on board, the major challenge I faced was that of ICT application. Then the first thing I did was to assemble the best brains available in the institution’s ICT unit to carry out the projects to enable us adopt the global trend of ICT compliance,” he said.
Apart from two applications, the school manager and the Exams Logic software, which the team developed before 2010, one of which was marketed to Kaduna and Katsina state governments, Junaidu said the other software applications are also generating patronage.
He said: “Before you came in, the thing I was printing were documents. One, to two organizations – a university and a government parastatal. The government parastatal has given us a contract to develop similar system for them. We did it for SBRS Funtua, Jigawa Polytechnic. A division of agricultural colleges in Kaduna are using some of the applications.
“I also mentioned earlier to you that the Kada legend is a school manager for secondary schools. We deployed it long time ago to some schools in Katsina state and Kaduna state. They are already being used by other people but we are going to be doubling our effort so that we get these applications marketed far and wide.”
Speaking on how the software applications operate, Junaidu said, many of the applications are integrated to ‘speak to themselves’ so record keeping in the university is nearly seamless.
He said: “If you look at other portals, it shows you your current records but this one shows you the whole records since you became a student of the university. Even when you graduate, we leave some of these records like the courses you registered, fees paid and accommodation for you to access.
“These applications also communicate with each other. The Exams Logic can be web based; it can also be used in the traditional way, on your desktop. Once the results are ready, you can now push them to the students’ portal so that students can read from their portals.
“All these applications talk to one another seamlessly. The user of the students portal does not have to know that the student portal talk to the exam software, staff portal, facility manager. All of them are integrated.”
Members of the team, who are programmers or scientists teaching in the university, described the project as an exciting contribution to their careers and the university’s development.
One of them, Muhammed Shuaibu Umar, said the failure of the first students’ portal, contracted to a bank was what provded the opportunity to the team.
He said: “Initially, the university contracted a bank to develop software for it, though it was a kind of joint development between the bank and the university. You know software development is like building a house. You need an architect and a builder to implement. So, we were like the architects of the program and the banks were the builders. The program was supposed to last for five years, but unfortunately, it couldn’t continue. So, the management of the university challenged the team from the university to come out with the solution within a short period of time.
“Some of us are actually computer scientists, that is, programmers; some are engineers and two people from registry and bursary. We formed a team that developed a portal. Because of the urgency, it was developed in about three to four months.
“It was a fantastic experience working with the software development team. You see young men coming together to develop such a huge software within the shortest possible time. Sometimes, we use to go for retreat in Kaduna. It was a very interesting experience, we learnt a lot from each other.
“Some members of in the team are actually very experienced. For example, I have been into programming for the past 20 year?s. When the software program started, I was the head of MIS then, that is the development of thefirst portal brought by the bank.”
Another team member, ?Dr.A.F Donfack Kana said everyone was dedicated to the project.
“The development was very interesting. We gave it our best to develop our own software in-house without involving outsiders to solve our problems, and today, we are happy that we have achieved what was our target.
“Having studied our problems, we started most of our software from the scratch up to completion. We sourced the team of professionals from within the university and it took us time to come up with those software.
“Today, the software are huge success to the university because the problem of processing result is no longer a problem in the university. We are conducting post UTME with our own software and we also use it for UTME itself. So, we can say students are using the software, staff are using it and they are all enjoying it,” he said.
A member of staff of the university, Mallam Auwwalu Umar told The Nation that the software applications are user friendly and has eased access to information that used to take days to get.
“Even from the comfort of my hom,e and even on my bed, with the use of my mobile smartphone, I can get any information I need about the institution, the staff strength, the students population, promotion, retirement and own personal information.
“In the past, there was information that you had to queue to access, even as a staff. Students use to queue to buy forms, register and even pay school fees. But, all that has been completely wiped out with the development of the softwares,” he said.
On her part, Adikwu Elizabeth, a student of Quantity Surveying, also agreed that the applications have helped to save students a lot of time.
