The Minister of Transportation, Sen. Sa’idu Alkali has explained that Ahmadu Bello University, ABU, Zaria was selected to mentor the new Federal University of Transportation Daura to ensure that the institution took off smoothly.
He said during a visit to the new university on Friday that the Ministry had to seek for the support of the National Universities Commission, NUC, which appointed ABU to mentor the university.
According to him, when he came on board as minister, he met a beautiful edifice, but with only a Vice-Chancellor, VC, appointed to run the institution.
“A university needs four principal staff for take-off, that is the VC, Bursar, Librarian and the Registrar, what I did was to approach NUC to appoint a mentor university for us, so that we’ll be able to start admission in the 2023/2024 academic year, and ABU was appointed.
“Another challenge we had then, the university was not captured in the 2023 appropriation year, so we had to source for fund to start academic activities for the session,” Alkali said.
The minister, however, said President Bola Tinubu had enlisted the university in the 2024 appropriation.
He said after getting the NUC accreditation to commence academic activities, “we also had to approach Joint Admission and Matriculation Board to open their portal through change of institution”.
Mr Alkali said that enabled the university to admit more than 500 students in 14 disciplines.
“We outsourced lecturers on a visiting basis, and lectures have commenced,” the minister added.
On the complain of inadequate power supply, potable water and means of transportation by the students, Mr Alkali pledged to address the problems over time.
“We are going to look into that, but you know a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step, we’ll get rid of it,” he assured the students.
According to him, the ministry has approached the Tertiary Education Fund and the university has met all the checklists to receive TETfund intervention.
“The university will be enlisted for next year, so that we have more infrastructure for the university to grow,” he said, and commended the pioneer VC, Prof. Umar Adam-Katsayal, for doing a lot towards the progress of the institution.
Earlier, the vice-chancellor had appreciated the minister for the visit and expressed the hope that it would be of greater benefit to the university and the well-being of the students.
NAN
