Wole Adedeji, Ilorin
The Kwara State University (KWASU), Malete, has announced its resolve to live on its Internally-Generated Revenue (IGR) as against resort to loans for survival.
This will be put to practice for the next five years in addition to expected government grants, the new Vice Chancellor, Prof. Mohammed Mustapha Akanbi, has said.
The institution had allegedly suffered denial of funding by the immediate past government in the state running to about five years.
The development was said to get worse towards the tail end of the regime when it was discovered that records showed that the University was being credited to get regular subventions that never was, running into millions of Naira.
Featuring on the ‘Newskeg’, a regular news programme organized by the Coŕrespondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Kwara Council, Professor Mustapha Akanbi said every avenue would be explored by him to change the face of the university.
The Vice Chancellor said, “KWASU will be self sustaining in the next five years without seeking loans from banks. One of my vision is to improve on our IGR.
“KWASU will be self sustaining in the next five years without seeking loans from banks. One of my visions is to improve on our internal revenue”.
Explaining further, his reform steps in the institution, Prof. Akanbi said; “One of the reforms I embarked upon is to introduce the much popular faculties systems instead of the college being operated before.
“We also want to introduce tenure on administrative staff. All head of departments, directors and others now have tenures. It’s not proper for someone to remain in a particular position for years”.
Akanbi bemoaned COVID-19 pandemic which he described as the major problem in Education like other sectors but disclosed that his university had since adopted online teaching and learning which did not allow disruptions in its programmes.
He, however, opined that the system could not be said to be the best pointing out that the situation had shown that professors should now be more up and doing in research work and inventions to tackle the current global challenges.
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He continued, “A way forward for our professors is to ensure they go into quality oriented researches. Research must be providing solutions to problems and not just for the sake of doing it. It must spell out benefits which would be better than far, in our present situation”.
The Vice Chancellor, who is the son of Justice Mustapha Akanbi, said with good concentration on Agriculture, the economy of the nation, the state and indeed, tertiary education would swell up to meet the demands on all sides
To him he said, “KWASU had written a proposal to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to fund its Agriculture programme, we plan to go into farming so as to be able to augment our finances and also assist our host communities and others”.