From Abdulrazaq Mungadi, Gombe
The provost in charge of the Gombe State College of Education (COE) Billiri, Dr Langa Bangunji, has called on the state government and other stakeholders to come to the aid of the college, stating that the college which was established in 2018 is a toddler institution that is desirous of growth to cater for the state.
According to the provost, issues ranging from the lack of parameter fencing, road networks and electricity as well as golly erosion have been a major challenge in the school.
Dr Langa in an interview with Daily Sun explained that the only road linking the gate and other parts of the college was constructed by the school using the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) in 2019. “That was when accreditation exercise was to take place, we used about N37 million to do that road which transverse from the gate to the admin block and down to the hostel”.
The provost disclosed that the contractor handling the parameter fencing and the construction of the gatehouse for the college left the site four years ago and that the contractor insisted that he had certificates of work he has done and have not been paid.
He said, “these are challenges for us, we are finding it difficult to pay for the little electricity we are having at the admin block because we are having problems of funding, we pay for power and we fuel generator, we spend getting to N500, 000 every month to run our generator and that has not been easy, because it has resulted to the point that we longer start our generator until when we something that is so critical, we put it on and we turn it off immediately we finished”.
According to the provost, another notable challenge in the college borders around the issue of staffing. He said, “you know in academics employment is supposed to be a daily affair, because for example, somebody is here teaching French and University Dutse want him, he will leave you, because they are giving him better offer, you can’t stop him and if you did not employ another person to take over his position, how do you do”.
“These are some of the challenges we are facing and we are hopeful that the government will critically look at our peculiar situation because institutions are not like ministry and can’t be run like a ministry, you must spend money every day. This is the only conventional college of education in the whole of Gombe state, we need to support the college if we are to really educate our people,” Dr Langa stated.
However, the provost expressed joy while stating that the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has the major source of development of the college.
He said, TETFund has been to fund a number of projects in the college, “this includes the construction of a modern library, students’ hostel and equipping of offices of principal officers”.
“We were given zonal intervention in 2020, which we used to buy furniture for principal officers, a Hilux vehicle for the provost, a 16-seater bus for teaching practice, supervision for lecturers.
We also had N187 million that was allocated for infrastructure development, which was used to construct and furnished the only library in the school.
“In 2021 we were lucky and were given N200 million as a special intervention which was used to construct a befitting and well-furnished male hostel for 200 students. In the 2021 annual intervention, we had an allocation of N250 million, we processed it and a contract has been awarded for the construction of a female hostel for about 300 students,” Dr Langa told Daily Sun.