Re: The hardest part of being ABU Vice Chancellor

Iwant to publicly confess my admiration for the Daily Trust weekly menus as manifest in its rich diet of interview series on Saturdays and Sundays.

As usual, the previous week’s edition was a bumper harvest of exciting voyage of serial discovery, full of bureaucratic experiences and intellectual encounters, at ABU Zaria, one of Africa’s unarguably largest and most promisingly rated centre of learning and academic excellence.

I must admit here that Professor Ibrahim Garba has made my day , with his excellent narratives, which profound testimony , he has eloquently and pointedly exposed, through his beautiful punch line that has been adopted as the title above.

Indeed, if I am free to quote or paraphrase this consummate academic guru , without facing the consequences of being charged for academic treason ,aka plagiarism, I can say that based on my difficult and frustrating ordeals, on Dr. Tonnie Iredia’s assignment for the formalisation of partnerships, to foster professional and academic bonds with NTA for affiliation of NTA Television College’s degree status.

This untoward encounter gave me a resentful feeling that, rightly or wrongly, made me conclude that the hardest part of being ABU Vice Chancellor is, “managing change in a system steeped in resistance to change”.

This vision less resistance has caused the ABU to lose Tonnie Iredia’s dynamic mission to integrate the ABU ‘s Faculty of Enginnering as the expert links and maintenance centre for all the imported junk and dumped transmitters from Germany, with the goal of making the proposed arrangement to serve as the spring board for the takeoff of Nigerian model or modules.

Anyway, I am sure the present NTA DG, Yakubu Ibn Muhammad, can also equally and competently, revive this Tonnie Iredia’s lofty and laudable national project.

I want to congratulate Professor Ibrahim Garba for the successful take off of his collaboration efforts with the Nigerian Airforce and pray that the NTA proposal will equally come on board for the glory of good leadership legacies as well as a tribute to my very good friend ,the late Professor Yakubu Nasidi, then the Deputy Vice Chancellor who anchored our passage through the tunnels of treacherous valleys and hills of Ivory Tower dirty politics, who became a victim of Nigerian patriotism ,whose passion for this project made him a fall guy. May Allah reward him, even in death! Mal. Abdulkarim Muhammad Abdullahi, Keffi, Nasarawa State amaabdulkarim196@ gmail.com