FUNAAB acting VC seeks approval to hire more staff

Adejoke Adeleye/Abeokuta

Worried by the new admission quota for universities approved by the National Universities Commission (NUC), the Acting Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University of Agriculture (FUNAAB), Abeokuta, Prof. Oladele Enikuomehin has appealed to the Federal government to give the institution approval to recruit more staff.

Prof. Enikuomehin who made the appeal in Abeokuta at a press conference to herald the institution’s combined 23rd, 24th and 25th convocation ceremonies holding this weekend, explained that employing more staff would ensure effective training and monitoring of the students.

Enikuomehin said the approval became necessary given the admission quota of 3,500 students handed over to the institution by the National Universities Commission.

The Vice-chancellor said the population of the institution currently stood at 17,312, made up of 15,847 undergraduates and 1,471 post graduate students, respectively.

He disclosed that the current students population was more than the available hands required to train them.

“The admission quota approved by the National Universities Commission is 3,500. This is premised on the need to create opportunity for young Nigerians to access tertiary education.

“This quota, however, needs to be matched by adequate provision for staffing, in particular, in the academic units. The students’ population is starting to override the available hands required to train them. The only panacea is that the university be given approvals to recruit staff required to ensure effective students training, supervision and mentoring,” he stated.

The Acting VC said the nation has the capacity to feed itself, but what was needed were the right policies on agriculture, implementation of such policies and adequate funding.

The university don also appealed to the Federal Government to rescind its decision to scrap college of management sciences in the university.

He explained it was not enough to train the students on agriculture alone but the world now, for them to survive, they need managerial and administrative skills.

His words: “The Senate of the institution has started curriculum review on management courses. We need the management courses to train the students on ways to manage loans, resources, issues of industrial relations, and management of staff.”

The graduating students were those who completed their courses of study between 2013/2014, 2014/2015/and 2015/2016.

While giving the breakdown of the results, he disclosed that for 2013/2014, a total of 1,881 students would graduate, and for 2014/2015, 2,731 would graduate as well as 3, 065 would graduate from their various courses of study for 2015/2016 academic session.

In the three sessions, 203 students bagged first class, while 2, 878 got second class upper while 3,602 and 828 others got second class lower and Third class respectively. Only 32 made ordinary pass.

Enikuomehin who said the institution has continued to create avenues for staff training and development.

On how the country can feed itself, he said: “My answer is this, when our focus as a nation in terms of policy design, policy implementation situate on agriculture we will be able to feed ourselves”.

“Indeed, Nigeria has the capacity to feed itself, what we need is the right policy, implementation of policies and appropriate funding wherein both the researchers, extension workers, the private entrepreneurs, where everybody is happy with its own role in the value chain”.

“What we need is government policy should be such that will take up findings with appropriate policy framework and funding to make it available for commercialisation, to create enabling environment for private sector participation in such a manner that they feel safe to do business here”.

“There are administrative bottlenecks that make some of this things almost impracticable. We should sit down and review this bureaucratic procedures and create avenues for ssuccess,” he stated.