■ MBA Distance Learning takes off with 1,000 students at ABU as senate approves Business School
By Job Osazuwa
Following approval by the National Universities Commission (NUC), the Ahmadu Bello University Distance Learning Centre has taken off with the first set of about 1, 000 students in the Masters of Business Administration (MBA) programme. This will soon be followed by a number of other undergraduate and postgraduate courses in 2017.
Making this known during the institution’s 39th convocation, held at the Mamman Kontogora Square, Zaria and in which 11, 731 students graduated from different departments, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Ibrahim Garba noted that the Distance Learning Centre will offer learning opportunities to prospective candidates who were unable to get a space in the regular academic programmes owing to “limited full-time carrying capacity or constrained by other circumstances.”
He said the institution was working around the clock, using the resources of the Distance Learning Centre and Institute of Computing and ICT to introduce e-learning platforms for students benefit.
In a related development, the Senate of the University has approved the establishment of Ahmadu Bello University Business School. To this end, it has mandated the management to bring together the Departments of Accounting and Business Administration from the Faculty of Administration in the Kongo satellite campus to join the Department of Economics in the Faculty of Social Sciences in the Samaru main campus so that the Business School can operate on a Faculty-type model that could allow development and expansion of many financial and managerial programmes as obtainable in universities of international repute.
But in his address, Prof. Garba lamented that the problem of shortage of funds in running ABU, especially in the overhead and personnel costs, has become critical.Hear him: “For example, the annual overhead appropriation for 2016 is only N140.4 million and so far, N100.3 million is released with only one month to the end of the year. So, when you compare this to the monthly energy bill of N85 million, you can judge for yourself. The university also continues to augment salary shortfalls of about N100 million per month from the Federal Government in order to settle its full staff wage bill.”
Garba said the university was barely managing to survive from the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), derived mostly from fees and other charges. Another major challenge bedeviling ABU, according to the VC, is the severe shortage and extreme poor living conditions of students’ hostels, and how it negatively affects learning and students’ welfare.
Of the 11,731 that graduated, there were 299 PhDs, 2,687 Masters and 973 postgraduate diplomas. Out of the remaining 7,772 Bachelor degree holders, 49 had First Class; 1, 269 Second Class Upper Division; 4,250 Second Class Lower, 1, 880, Third Class, 141 pass and 183 unclassified degrees from Faculties of Law, Medicine, Pharmaceutical Sciences and Veterinary Medicine.