Dr. Olokoba Abdullahi, the Provost of College of Arabic and Islamic Legal Studies (CAILS) in Ilorin, says Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazak has rescued colleges of education in Kwara State by releasing huge sums of money to them.
Abdullahi commended the governor for his efforts during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ilorin on Tuesday.
He said that all these colleges did not get their subvention for seven months from September 2018 to March 2019 before AbdulRazak came to their rescue.
“The state government had an agreement with all colleges of education in the state to pay a subvention of 70 per cent of our salary and insisted that we should help ourselves with the internally generated revenue.
“We managed the IGR for some years until September 2018 when the government stopped paying the subvention until the coming of Governor AbdulRazak in April.
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“The new administration invited all the colleges of education in the state and asked for our debt profile where we mentioned non-payment of salary, poor infrastructure and accreditation of courses.
“The governor promised to solve all the issues, but decided to begin with salary and released a sum of N250 million for all the colleges.
” I personally pleaded for salary and accreditation and they released N24 million for accreditation of all the courses in the college,” Abdullahi said.
The provost said that the governor promised to pay one month from the current month and one month from the outstanding salary until all was paid.
According to Abdullahi, CAILS was running an affiliated degree courses with the Bayero University Kano (BUK), but the college could not accredit all the courses when it was time for accreditation.
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“BUK eventually terminated our affiliation through the National University Commission (NUC) on the ground of distance, but in true sense it was because we failed to accredit all our courses
“The memorandum of understanding stated that if there is a disengagement with the university, the admitted students on ground will finish there courses, but there will be no more opportunity to admit new students
“This made it possible for us to still have few students running degree courses, and in three years time, they will finish their courses,” he said.
Abdullahi said that the college decided to affiliate with University of Ilorin, adding that necessary documents had been completed.
“We are expecting University of Ilorin to come and access us before the NUC final assessment,” he said. (NAN)