Armayau Bichi: I Have Transformed FUDMA to Best University in Nigeria 

Professor Armayau Hamisu Bichi, the outgoing Vice-Chancellor of Federal University Dutsin-Ma, Katsina State, in this interview rolls out numerous achievements recorded by the varsity under his leadership. Francis Sardauna brings excerpts

How has it been for the past five years that you have been on the saddle of leadership here?

 When I assumed office, the university had only three faculties and twenty programmes and also only three of the programmes have full accreditation from the National Universities Commission (NUC). But, when I came in, I approached NUC and they came for resource assessment and then all the remaining seventeen programmes got full accreditation. 

These accreditations made me to request NUC to give us the approval to open the School of Postgraduate Studies (SPGS), which we did, and they came again for resource visit and all our programmes scored high marks and the NUC gave us the go ahead to start running postgraduate programmes and then after two years, they came for accreditation and all the programmes in the postgraduate were accredited.

After that, I approached the NUC again to increase the quarter of our students, which they did, from 500 students to 1,800 students as possible quarters that the university can admit. I also asked all the departments to develop new programmes because we have only twenty programmes which were fully accredited. 

Today, we have more than eighty programmes which are currently running in the university that have full accreditation from the NUC. All these were done within the space of five years.

Three faculties now have been increased to fourteen faculties, the latest are the faculties of Health Sciences and Technology and Nursing Sciences. We have more than a hundred programmes in the school. 

The management decided to upgrade the School of Postgraduate Studies to College of Postgraduate Studies. We also established the Continuing Education Centre (CEC) for those people who may not have the opportunity to come to FUDMA for regular classes. 

We started with less than 500 people and the centre kept on improving and increasing in the number of students. We asked the Senate of the University for approval to convert it to, first, a School and now College of Professional and Continuing Studies.

When the university held the college’s 6th matriculation ceremony, there were more than 7,000 students in the college. It has branches in four states of Katsina, Kano, Kaduna and Abuja. 

This is really an achievement we have gotten and it is so fruitful that many people are approaching the university to open study centres for them in their various states or local governments.

Also, when the university started, we had less than 2,000 students but we now have more than 40,000 students, including the postgraduate and college of professional continuing studies students.

For the number to increase from barely 2,000 to 40,000, it means people are appreciating what the university is doing. Every student wants to come to the university because it is the only federal university that has maintained its academic calendar. 

For the past five years, the university has not had a break that would warrant skipping any academic session and also the university is the only one, when students come, they know when they would graduate.

We also constructed the College of Medical and Health Sciences, Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Engineering. The Faculty of Social Sciences is also under construction. We have also constructed the Faculty of Renewable Natural Resources, Faculty of Agriculture and also many classes and lecture theatres. 

We have also constructed two hostels and several others are under construction with almost eighty percent at completion stage and I am hopeful that by the next two to three months, before my tenure elapses, we will be able to complete, furnish and put them to effective use.

Reports indicate that FUDMA staff showered encomiums on you for prompt promotion and increased staff welfare. What informed your decision sir?

When I came on board, I met a lot of backlogs of promotions. So, I made sure all those two to three years backlog of promotions was done in record time. And in my two to three months in office, the backlogs were cleared. When I put more pressure on our staff to work hard and maintain our academic calendar, I found out that the only thing that will make them work is to motivate them. 

Any staff that works hard, we make sure that his/her promotion is done as at when due. We make sure that on the 2nd October of each year, we have the A & PC (Appointments & Promotions Committee) meeting, which confirms the promotion and that is how we were able to make them work hard. I think 80% of the professors that are in this university got their promotions during the course of my five years in office.

How did you get the funding for these projects?

When I came on board, we found out many areas where we can generate more money for the university. We opened our consultancy unit, in which we give some of our works to generate money. 

Opening of the university farm also helped us to generate money. Now, with our Entrepreneurship Development Centre, we are trying to turn it to something that will generate money for the university. 

We have started with sachet water production and now we want to start bottling it; we have the university farm that is also generating money. But the main source of income for the university is the IGR from students registration fees; the postgraduate, college of professional continuing studies and SIPS as well as the undergraduates students. 

Although our university has one of the lowest school fees, notwithstanding, we utilize what we generate to execute most of the projects mentioned earlier. We also get intervention from TETFund and from the yearly budgetary allocation.

What informed your decision to pursue arbitration and negotiations to dispose of  litigations against the university?

When I took over, there were a lot of crises in the university. So, the first thing I did was to make sure that we brought everyone under the same roof. I taught them all to profess one FUDMA as FUDMA is our university and we have no other university than FUDMA. 

So, we must stay here and celebrate FUDMA and make it work. Many of our staff forgot most of the issues and concentrated on moving FUDMA forward. 

I invited the Legal Directorate headed by the university Legal and Industrial Relations Officer, which advised the university on the best way to go with the cases. We called all the other people that were involved and had a dialogue with them. 

Dialogue is the main weapon that we can use to achieve or win even wars. If you sit down, on a table and discuss, you can understand each other’s grievances rather than going to court. 

So, under the leadership of Director Legal, we were able to sort out more than 95% of the cases, which were all settled out of court. We have won many of them in court and this is a very great achievement.

Now, we have very few cases remaining which by the grace of God, before I leave office, we will be able to finish with them.

Why did you wait until towards the end of your tenure to commence restructuring of the university?

This is not the only time we did restructuring in the university. When I came on board, we restructured. When you restructure, you observe to see the success you have and any other things which may not bring that success; because anything that you do, there can be merit and demerit.

 So, the idea is when you restructure, you observe, you monitor and see how far the level of success, how far the level of unsuccessful results you get and measure which one is much more than other. 

It is only God that is perfect; we as humans are not perfect. So, we can make mistakes. In restructuring, you can make mistakes, so that is why we give a time frame to observe and monitor, to see if the previous one is good, then you continue working on the aspect that is good and the aspect that is not good, you come again and do another restructuring, to remedy the past mistakes and strengthen the future. 

That is why now we are restructuring and the restructuring came to me as advice from the management. You see, whatever we do or any decision we take, is a common decision, whether anybody likes it or not. 

We talk in the management meeting and many times, what I want is not what we do at the end, because I respect members’ views. I give everybody fair hearing; so once they outnumber my opinion, I agree and do what they want and it comes as a resolution of the management.

I have never been dictatorial either in the management, in the senate or in any meetings I chair. I give members fair hearing. Our people advised me that it is high time we restructured; to look at the gains of the first restructuring and take note of the areas that we have problems, for us to restructure again.

We started from department to department, unit to unit and anything that we did was informed by the advice of the heads of that department or unit. In all, the Registrar, the Bursar, the Librarian, the DVC’s, the Deans, Directors, Heads of Unit and everybody was consulted and involved.

I don’t know all the staff of the University; I only know of a few of them. So, anything we wanted to do, we ask the heads of the unit or department for advice, to point out the staff that have not been coming to work, they pointed out. 

To point out the staff that do not have any work to do; even if they come to work, there is no work for them to do, and point out the staff that have been coming to work, to do the available work, they pointed out and from there, the management took a common decision on what to do on these three categories of staff. 

But to my dismay, anytime I come out, people will say, my HOD said you have done that. This is unacceptable and people should not be doing that because as an administrator or a leader, you take the bull by the horns. Whatever happens, you take responsibility, good or bad. 

Meanwhile, we took the decision in the best interest of the university. So, why will you be shy and say this is the person that did it? In fact, you should just say, it is  a management decision. 

You are part of the decision, perhaps you suggested we should take A to B and B to C and now you are saying, it is the work of the Vice Chancellor! Honestly, I am not happy with our Heads of Department and Unit and have asked them to take the responsibilities of any action from their departments or units, because a coward should never be a leader!

Now that you are about to leave office as the Vice-Chancellor, what is the fate of the Al-majiri pupils and girl hawkers you enrolled in schools under the university community services programme?

I am sure and as well praying that whoever comes in as the new Vice Chancellor, should be able to continue from where I stopped because this community service should never be abandoned and the ones we have engaged, the community people feel at ease and a sense of belonging.

I pray that whoever comes in will continue the programme in the Gender Directorate and in FUDMA SIPS where we train the Almajiri pupils and remove all those girls hawking in the streets and return them back to school.

What are the challenges that you faced in your five-year tenure?

Honestly, there were challenges, one of which is the issue of insecurity. The challenge drew us back to the point that no activities can take place in the Main campus, and anytime a staff or student is kidnapped, I feel the pain and the pain continues until when we get them released. 

Also, when there is instability, when the school is divided into many camps, this one is for this person, and this one is for that person, I feel bad and bitter. 

However, when we are able to resolve the issue, I feel good. Another challenge is lack of enough funds to run the affairs of the university, which delays progress. 

The issue of peace and security is a collective responsibility. We have all done our best in collaboration with the security agencies and by God’s grace, there has been a relative peace under which we operated and recorded some measure of successes. 

Everybody should continue praying because prayer is the most important in this issue. We keep on praying for peace to continue to reign in the school, in the Dutsinma community, in Katsina state and Nigeria in general. I think the prayer aspect is the most important thing which keeps us well and alive till now.

But, overall, I thank God for having a successful tenure and history will judge us for what we have done or what successes we have achieved.

What would you like to be remembered for in FUDMA?

The stability that we have achieved during my tenure, the peace and the increase in numbers of projects that we have done and the increase in the number of staff and students, and the way FUDMA is being cherished by everybody, as one of the best and fast-growing universities in Nigeria. I want to be remembered for all these developments, for these attainments.