Why we need to offer management courses —FUNAAB VC

THE vice chancellor of the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Ogun State, Professor Ololade Enikuomehin, has appealed to the Federal Government to reconsider and review the policy that disallows specialised universities to admit students into management science courses.

He made the appeal on Monday in Abeokuta during the pre-convocation press conference to announce programmes for the 23rd, 24th and 25th combined convocation ceremonies of the university.

The federal government had on January 8, 2017 directed specialised universities to stop running programmes that are outside their mandates, after observing that some universities had deviated from their core courses.

The Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, who gave the directive on behalf of the Federal Government, had also directed the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) to delete all such courses on its portal.

But Professor Enikuomehin said that allowing specialised universities like FUNAAB to offer management courses would help add unquantifiable value to the skills and overall competence of the graduates.

He explained: “The agric graduate of today is not an agric graduate that is expected to work with hoe and cutlasses. The training we give them is to be entrepreneurs and managers of farming enterprises. But when these people graduate and there are no enabling environments to be what they are trained to be, they’ll abandon the train.”

According to him, if graduates of an agric-based research university like FUNAAB are provided with the right intervention mechanisms (like loans or access to land and machinery), they will be able to manage men and resources.

He explained further: “(One) of the expectations out there is that (our) graduates should be self-sustaining and (be) employers of labour; but to be able to start that, we need to lend some support. We are doing the training, expecting that the society and government will create the enabling environment for these people to integrate properly.

“Now, from the background that the graduate we are producing is a man that we expect would own a farm, employ labour, take machinery on loan or lease, and sit over an establishment wherein there are workers and material resources to manage, if all he knows is how to cross-breed chicken, that business will fail.

“If he does not know a bit of banking, a bit of management of human resources; and a bit of entrepreneurial engagement, he will fail.”

He maintained that “it is important, indeed critical, for the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta to have a College of Management Sciences, wherein the programmes there will interface with the core (agricultural programmes of the university).”

Enikuomehin said that the plan is not to produce ‘core professionals’ from those (management) courses, but to offer them because they would complement and greatly enhance the competence of the agric professionals FUNAAB is training.

He cited the Communication and General Studies Department, which has always been present in all universities, including FUNAAB.

“The department does not produce graduates of English; but for almost 20 years, the department has been a viable support unit, the absence of which we would not be able to produce a graduate. (It is) sustaining the courses of English, Logic, French and related courses that make a complete graduate.

“If GNS is sustained, why not management courses? What is important is to have a right framework within which it works, the appropriate nomenclature by which it is identified and an understanding by the larger society of the blend between their existence and the typical nature of the university.

“On our part, we have started the process of review of the curriculum of the programmes in the college to align with the mandate of being a specialized university.  It is our desire that the programmes be allowed to run with the reviews being processed by the Senate.”

A combined total of 3,065 (first degrees) and 1,442 postgraduate students are expected to take part in the convocation ceremony slated for tomorrow (Friday October 20, 2017).