‘How Etisalat/ABU MoU started first M.Sc. in Telecom programme’
Dr. Bashir Mu’azu
is the head, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria. In this interview with he explains how the university is benefitting from Etisalat Telecommunication Company’s intervention in the running of a Master’s Degree programme in Telecommunication, among other issues. Excerpts:
ecently, ABU commenced a collaborative programme with Etisalat Telecommunication Company, can you share with us what it is all about?
Yes, around the year 2012, Etisalat Nigeria approached the university that they would want to do a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) project for the commissioning of their 3-G network. Considering the status of Ahmadu Bello University, the company felt it would have more impact if it did the programme at the university. They decided that they were going to have an intervention on Electrical Engineering. Therefore, there was an MoU signed between the university and Etisalat.
That was how the project started. The discussion started in 2012, but because of its scope, as it was essentially to set up a laboratory and to intervene in students and staff training, they also needed a collaborating university outside Nigeria. I think that was the initial challenge they had, getting the collaborating university.
Eventually, towards the end of 2012 and early 2013, they were able to get the consultant, headed by Professor Munzali Jibril. They were then able to get Plymouth University in the United Kingdom. When these partners were identified, formal meeting started. Therefore, the partners in the MoU became Etisalat Nigeria, ABU, Etisalat Academy, Dubai, University of Plymouth and Wawi Nigeria Ltd.
Wawi was supposed to provide the laboratory facilities, and the laboratory they set up here had equipment worth over N200 million.
What is the role of Etisalat Academy in Dubai?
The Etisalat Academy in Dubai is supposed to provide training for the Masters in Telecommunication Engineering programme. They were supposed to provide training in Nigeria and Dubai. Because of the cost implication, they would run six of the modules in the academy and they would run six modules here. At the end of the year, the best three students from each class would go and do a course at the Etisalat Academy in Dubai.
For the University of Plymouth, four of the staff of the department are to go there for their Ph.D, and some of the staff of the university would come to ABU to deliver lectures for our staff and students. Etisalat Nigeria is the one to provide the funds for all of these.
In this direction ABU and Plymouth were able to evolve, for the first time, a Master’s of Science Degree in Telecommunication Engineering in Nigeria. Etisalat calls the entire programme Etisalat Telecommunication Engineering programme.
Eventually, in April or May 2014, the MoU was signed by all the partners. Formally, the first set of students started in 2014. The entire five-year period of the Etisalat intervention costs about $2.9 million.
This is split into Ph.D sponsorship that takes $646,000, exchange of visits between Etisalat Academy and Plymouth was allocated $727,000, the internship for M.Sc. students, which is a onemonth compulsory programme in Abuja, takes $168,000, there is e-resources for our libraries and this takes $899,000. This makes it $2.9 million.
Can you tell us the stage you are on the students’ training?
So far, we are now having the second set of students. The first set of students had done their internship between 9th of April and 5th of May, 2014. The second set is presently in Abuja doing their internship. They started on the 20th of April and they are going to finish on the 15th of May, 2015.
The first best three students went to Dubai in January, 2015 for one week. We are hoping that the best three students for the second set would have theirs in June.
We have four of our staff already in Plymouth for their Ph.D. Two went in 2013 and the other two left in 2014.
We also had two visits by the Etisalat Academy instructors. They came to do a programme between January and March this year.
So, essentially the only area we are having challenges in the implementation of the MoU has been the visit by the staff of the University of Plymouth. All attempts to make them come only ended off with a condition that if any of their staff would come to Nigeria, he would be restricted to Abuja because of the security challenges. Therefore, trying to work out the logistics of getting students to go to Abuja for two or three weeks may blow the cost out of the budget.
So, one of the suggestions tabled was to be utilising the Etisalat Abuja internship where the staff of the Plymouth would be meeting the students, but Etisalat was of the opinion that its internship was a comprehensive programme, so, there is no way they could merge it with another programme. This is the only aspect of the MoU that has not been implemented, if not, so far so good.
This Etisalat intervention, does it cover undergraduate programmes?
The clarification to this is that the MoU is strictly on postgraduate studies. But obviously with the setting up of the lab, we are not precluded to train the undergraduate students, although the lab is set up for the M.Sc. programme.
Most of the Nigerian universities offer M.Sc. in Communication Engineering and so on and so forth. This is the first time M.Sc. in Telecommunication Engineering in Nigeria is being run, and I think that is one of the attractions for Etisalat to partner in the programme.
In selecting the best three students that I talked about, there are three criteria. A student must have satisfactory report from the internship, must have a CGPA of not less than 4.0 and must have a contemporary area that he is researching on. For instance, anybody that did not attend the internship, no matter his CGPA, is not qualified.
Apart from training of staff and students, what are the other areas that the MoU covers?
Etisalat set up a lab, as I said earlier, and the equipment in the lab worth over N200 million. They provided many types of equipment for telecommunication. We call the lab Etisalat Laboratory.
The lab is very important for the training of students. We wouldn’t have opportunity of accessing some of those equipment in the lab without the intervention. And each of those equipment was bought for a specific purpose. Holistically, they aid in the training of the Telecommunication students. The equipment were bought based on the course content.
Once a student has exposure to those equipment, when he goes for the internship, some of the things there are not going to be new. The internship is an integral part of the programme.
With this intervention from Etisalat, are you saying that ABU is moving from the era of producing students who are only good theoretically?
Yes, for all these things that Etisalat is doing is to ensure that the students that graduate from this programme should be ready for the Telecommunication industry. That is why part of the MoU stipulates that not more than 15 to 20 students are admitted for each session. This is to have a class that can be easily managed.
In the first year, we had about 16 students. This year, the students that went for the internship were 17. This is the standard of Etisalat training worldwide. So, Etisalat training is not essentially theory based, it is actually training for the job, not certificate only.
All these things they are doing are to make people ready for the Telecommunication market. This is why they take the internship seriously. A student has done all the theory and now he is being taken to the industry to see what happens in the field. So, when they graduate, they are fully ready for the market.
So far, have you been able to graduate students from the programme?
Etisalat has left the academic aspect of the programme to the university, if not the degree would have just turned into a professional Master’s Degree programme, but they wanted it to be an academic degree. So, the academic content is left for ABU and Plymouth University.
So, in the next few months, before the end of the year, we would start graduating students of the first set.
One important area that I want to shed light on is the subscription to the Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (IEEE) bouquet. This is because, for anybody in Electrical Engineering, that is the highest level of journals that exist. By this MoU, we have an unlimited access to their subscriptions. You could see that it is even the component that has the highest cost, because it is worth $899,000 over the fiveyear period.
What we did in ABU is that even people in the sciences, maths, physic etcetera, they could also access that. Therefore, we put it in the ABU network for others to access it. This is a very important plus for us, because I could imagine what it would cost ABU to pay a subscription of $899,000. I doubt if ABU could have afforded that.