While other universities in the country are doing everything academically possible to attain excellence and high rankings, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU) Bauchi is not moving with the tide thereby remaining stagnant.
The lamentation was made by the management of the University which attributed its recent abysmal performance in the university ranking by the National University Commission (NUC), to lack of siting of research work, non-uploading of research work on Google Scholar and lack of collaboration, among others.
Director of Research, Innovation and Development of the University, Professor Fatima Sawa while speaking during a Step-down workshop on Grants Winning proposal writing for ATBU at the Gubi permanent campus of the University said that, “As you are all aware, the ranking of the universities were out, and you could see that ATBU performed abysmally”.
Professor Fatima Sawa added that, “Some of the things that affected us are things that we considered as not very important. For instance, we don’t site our research work, we prefer to site research from outside, we don’t upload our research work on Google Scholar, so we are not visible”.
According to her, “We also do not have collaboration, we don’t have international students, we don’t have international lecturers and our students to staff ratio performance, this is some of the criteria that were used and we are having issues there”.
Fatima Sawa recalled that a similar workshop took place sometime in September, involving institutions in the Northeastern states of Nigeria in anticipation of the advert for the national research fund of TETFund and also for other possible accessible research grants.
The University Don stressed that, “So, we noted that despite that workshop that we had, we still have some gaps, most of our members are not abreast with the requirements for the TETFund concept notes and how to address the issues that are therein”.
“So, the management of the University
appealed to them to support us so that we can have a Step-down workshop exclusively for people who have submitted concept notes for us to review and it was approved”, the Director noted.
According to her, the aim of the workshop was to enable them to come together with a view to upgrading their concept notes to the required status, adding that, out of the over 50 concept notes that were submitted, non has met the criteria.
She said that, “So, if we had just gone ahead and submitted to TETfund, at the end of the day, nobody from ATBU will benefit, and we don’t want that to happen, it has happened before and we don’t want that to happen again, and that is why we decided that we are going to have a practical interaction for us to be guided on how to write the concept notes”.
The Director who informed that they are fully equipped with all the ICT facilities to make all the corrections noted that the uploading will be done at the training so that they will just be awaiting the outcome.
While stating that ATBU used to be a high ranking institution in Nigeria, the Director charged the participants to pay attention during the workshop in order to have a fruitful outcome at the end of the program.
“In terms of research grants, let us not just talk about TetFund, any form of research grant, there is hardly any person in this university who has attracted research grant”, she said.
While declaring the workshop open, the Vice-Chancellor of the University, Professor Mohammed Ahmad Abdulazeez said that no nation can progress without investing in research and development.
Represented by the DVC Admin, Professor Ibrahim Garba, the Vice-Chancellor maintained that for innovation to take place, massive investment in research and development need to be carried out.
“Unless you invest and also massively in R and D, there is no way you can innovate, and so, therefore, you will lose out on the benefit of this particular century that is driven by knowledge”, he said.
The VC also said that it was against that background that the management of the University became concerned particularly with regard to its performance in the 2020 NRF exercise.
According to him, “Except if we are living in the past glory, that particular performance is something that should make everyone worry, and factor in the recent ranking of Nigerian universities by NUC even though the methodology is beginning to be contested by quite a number of universities including us, it still doesn’t mean that we are last in the ranking, that is also a call for concern”.
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