Professor AbdulRasheed Na'Allah is the pioneer Vice-Chancellor of Kwara State University (KWASU), Malete. In this interview with ABDULLAHI OLESIN, he laments that Nigerian universities are only producing theorists and not those who can add to the development of the community therefore, he suggests that the universities must revise their curriculum to be relevant and to produce people that will be self employed.

What is the mandate of KWASU?
Kwara State University's mandate is to be a world-class university in all its ramifications, training and mobilizing people to be global citizens, to grow to be people who will immediately after leaving the university gain employment. By employment, I am not only talking of government employment, but create job opportunities for community.

Jobs that are in the real areas of need. In a nutshell, the mandate of Kwara State University is to take this community away from poverty. The former governor, (Dr. Bukola Saraki) was unmistakable in vision for the university, and we are determined with deliberate efforts to achieve that goal and I'm happy we are succeeding.

How far has the university achieved these goals?
The first thing we did when I was appointed was to begin to gather academic and non-academic staff that are qualified in helping the university to achieve its goals. We looked around the world, we began to recruit, we were particular with the infrastructure and structures which the university would have; buildings, equipment, libraries etc. We went as far as Harvard, MIT, University of Ilorin, Houston, Lagos everywhere.

Now, as far as a university is concerned, we have succeeded in bringing the core of the best to KWASU, these are individuals who have continued to do community development.

Another aspect where we have been able to implement our vision is the curriculum. We revised some that should be made stronger, we added, created some new ones. We have reached a comfortable level today, comparable to any university around the world in terms of academic materials. We are delivering to our students. We also put in place structures for evaluation.

We have strategy to evaluate lecturers. At the beginning of a semester, we do peer evaluation of teachers, including professors; we go to their classes to see how they are teaching. We also have centre for innovation in teaching and evaluating/examination that organizes seminars, workshops; the teaching innovation, to enhance teaching technology.

Three weeks to the end of a semester, we have student's questionnaire evaluation that is distributed to students to evaluate their teachers, on practical ideas, understanding. This is because we believe they know hardworking teaching staff. We gather all these materials in evaluating them on innovation brought to the classrooms.

Another aspect, is promoting community development. We believe the era of university dating itself poor community is gone.

We must be aggressive in our goal in community development. We are now making it mandatory at KWASU that every academic staff must have a community outreach programme in which he or she is using that expertise that he has to contribute to the community.

And it must not be that he is being paid. You go into the community, you identify the programme you want to do. KWASU has a centre for community development, constantly working together with its guidelines and has action research grant that is given to the staff. Like one professor Subair is doing in a community to help farmers. He trains secondary school students in agriculture programmes to become agents to help their parents through cell phones.

They would access information on agriculture techniques from around the world and pass it over to their parents. There are so many like that we give some grant to; people to do their research or setting up their programmes.

We also work with community as a university itself. We go around Gbugudu, Malete, Elemere, where we have lots of programmes which the university also involved in doing for community service.

Any constraints in the area of infrastructure and facilities?
Remember we are in a university that is not walking or running. We are flying; sometimes I wish we were in Rivers or Cross River where they have so much money. Believe me, the way we are running if we had the kind of money like these rich states, you won't ever recognize where we are now, because, we would have been extremely far away from where we are.

The fact is that we have need for more and more resources. But our strategy is not just to look at government alone; because there is no where in the world where government alone funds university. Some universities only have 30 per cent or less coming from the government. So, we mobilize for a lot more money to complement whatever government is giving.

So we have the strategy in place to do this. We have a centre for funding sponsored projects. There is a centre working in providing funds anywhere in the world and brings the information of funding to the staff, help them to write grant, process it properly and send the application. We are receiving results already, inform of grants.

For example, a Canadian organization, which helped us to do a major international workshop, which we recently completed. Some people came from UNESCO, Canada and many parts of Africa to Ilorin. So, we continue, among other ways, to mobilize for funds. In a nutshell, we are in need of a lot of money to meet our goals.

Do you have resources for Engineering and Law programmes you are embarking upon?
The College of Engineering will soon be in place. The government will soon launch KWASU Engineering Foundation for the building. Government has set N500 million for the first phase of KWASU engineering building. We are also collaborating with the best engineering college in the world.

We are looking at the possibility of having a research centre, mechanical, aero-space engineering programme inclusive, to contribute majorly to Nigeria's advancement and development. The law programme is also a gradual Process. We have recruited Professor AbdulRazaq, former Dean of Law, University of Ilorin to head the law programme. We are starting with diploma programme.

But our goal is community law, in which the libraries of Justice Mustapha Akanbi, Olaolu Ali, Alfa Belgore; all these would be relevant to what we are doing in our law programme, because we think that these are people in the bench and bar that had contributed enormously to what law is in Nigeria.

So, we want our students to actually understand the ideas, thinking of these individuals, so that when we have Law of Criminal Justice and the rest they could cite these erudite individuals in the way they had made their judgements.

And we are also going to expand our law library beyond Malete, beyond our campus into all these communities. In fact we would be naming our courses after these individuals, because we know they will be relevant to the ideals of the university.

How do you intend to tackle the skirmishes that happened recently over inability of some students to meet registration deadline?
It is the practice of university around the world not just KWASU; that is after registration that you became a bonafide registered students. Registration is not opened forever. It is only during registration period. What we had were students that did not register as at that end of registration.

And also failed to register after repeated reopening of the registration. Some students claim their money was stolen; some were unable to get money, because their parents do not have.

So, as a university we intend to stick by our time table. Calendar is extremely important; we don't want to be a university where we will not be able to finish our semester. We want our semester calendar to be regular. We can't compromise on that. Therefore, when a student comes to the university, he should be able to come ready to move in.

Things might not be as some parents want it, but whatever it is, we want to meet the deadline. If you come into a class late, and the lecturer turns you back, you must obey. You don't force yourself in, that's discipline. You don't force a university to open its portal when you know you are late. It does not work that way.

However, as a university, we want to start to mobilize for greater support for our students. We are already doing it. For example, we have students employment on campus, where students earn regular salary, just like anyone else. Every semester, we employ newer students so that they can earn money to complement their spending. We look at their academic performance, transcripts.

We make sure it is those who are strong enough, because we don't want employment to result to failure.

We also moderate hours they can work. What is important is that they have the opportunity to begin to develop that work ethics right from campus. They can work with professors, centres, etc. We also have a centre for advancement and development, which is mobilizing for scholarship for our students, targeted at equipment and books.

This is the area I will appeal to rich people, like parents, education enthusiasts who are interested in the growth of Nigeria. KWASU is here, and they can give KWASU money to help the students. If we get the scholarship, it will go along way to help genuine students who are interested in studies but do not have money. We can give them scholarship.

The era where we continue to open portal over and over is gone forever. We are going to be very firm with our deadline henceforth. What is important for students is hard work, character, discipline, vision, and not that you have missed a semester.

You don't have to blackmail the university. It is sad to note that some people even try to force Nigeria. This is a nation with laws and regulations; you will make it within the law.

What is your preparation for accreditation?
We have about 40 programmes, and we want to classify them, humanity, agric etc. We are purchasing equipment, building infrastructure. Government has approved constructions of some buildings, because of our requirements in preparation for accreditation. We have recruited more academic staff.

We have minimum need for accreditation requirement of our programmes. We are extremely comfortable. The departments have to prepare its tiles, registered students. So, towards the end of this year, we would have completed the accreditation of our programmes.

What about staff training?
We organize workshops for academic and non-academic staff. We also send them to different universities or hospitality tourism department in Thailand. We make sure the training they acquire suit our own vision for postgraduate programmes. We are supporting them with money and ideas.

What is solutions to the disturbing falling standard of education in the country?
It's a tragedy. It's an area in which Nigeria must sit down and rethink, because of the regularly irregular academic calendar in universities with nothing to show for it. Imagine a students coming back, and the universities rushing to finish, and eventually what happens? Lecturers who had not entered classes for months now want to rush students taking five to eight courses.

How would they cope? This is a major crisis. We then have university graduates with only, may be 100 level knowledge. It's terrible.

The same thing you have in primary and secondary schools. Primary schools have the most qualified teachers, but they are the poorest in terms of delivery. Parents send their children to private institutions that can not be compared with public owned, because that is where academic calendar is stable, and teachers are in classes. These students can go any length to cheat in examinations. They go to any length and it is contributing to our standard of education in the country.

Really, education stakeholders must sit together to now say enough is enough. What is the goal of Nigeria, where do we want to be in the next four years? And we can't get there without education. And judiciary has to be firm in ensuring what is right and just.

Community and parents must insist on giving their children the education they are paying for. Parents must demand for reasons for mass failures from schools, even public schools. Our National Assembly and state assemblies must ask questions. It seems we are in slumber in this country. Believe me, and it's scary. We are moving slowly in an electronic age of other countries.

Corruption is embedded in virtually every thing we do. We are lackadaisical. Every thing is very complex in our nation, sorry to say, we must build our education to be comparable and competitive with other advanced nations.

I want to see universities in Nigeria coming forward to give their stewardship and would announce how many jobs they've helped to create in the community in their efforts to create wealth.

How much resources they've helped to bring to their communities and ideas they've brought and helped to the community. And how these institutions would be assessed based on their contributions to community development.

How can the Ivory Tower help the country tackle unemployment problem?
This is the major headache of our nation, and this is an area universities have failed the nation. We started with the University College, Ibadan, now we have about 150 universities. Unfortunately, these experts are only producing theorists and not those who can add to development of the community. And that is our problem.

Universities must revise their curriculum to be relevant to produce people that will be self employed. Academic structures in the universities must be geared towards making this happen, like the centre for entrepreneurship we have.

We are also building commercial centre and industrial centres; skill acquisition centres, where students are taught how to acquire the skills needed to be self employed and they will earn certification.

Students are also encouraged to have projects that could be developed to venture capable of creating employment when they leave the school, and the university can support them with fund we are putting together.

This will make them continue to be self-employed with what they had been doing; not job-seekers. It does not matter what you study, every university should look into this. Liberal art is just to make you a thinking person, a creative, innovative person, the person who understands the need of his community, and mobilize his community and help others to move forward. We should equip our young ones with thinking faculty, innovative ideas, irrespective of the course you studied.

Government should create more skill acquisition centres for university graduates and support them with grants, funds to begin the business. Our population of about 150 million people is a blessing. China and America are surviving today because of their population. We have fertile land