From: Agaju Madugba, Katsina
The Academic Staff Union of Colleges of Legal and Allied Institutions at the Yusuf Bala Usman College of Legal and General Studies, Daura, Katsina State, has protested a move by the state government to change the status of the institution.
The College currently offers various courses leading to the award of diplomas and National Certificate in Education (NCE).
Governor Aminu Bello Masari had since proposed an Executive Bill before the state House of Assembly seeking to amend the law establishing the college.
But describing the proposal as ‘clandestine move,’ the union argued in a statement that, “The entire College community is opposed to any move aimed at deleting any of the existing courses, departments or schools.”
In fact, under the proposed amendment, the School of Languages and the School of Shari’a and Civil Law are expected to be deleted in favour of schools of Science and Technology, General Studies, Education, Agricultural Technology, Business and Management Studies, among others.
However, the school’s Provost, Prof. Sadiya Sani-Daura, justified the impending reforms insisting that they are designed to upgrade the college.
She told Daily Sun in an interview that, “deleting” as applied in the proposed draft Bill does not necessarily mean scrapping any of the affected courses.
As she puts it, “When I resumed here in 2015, I made a general assessment and identified certain challenges one of which is certification of some of the courses.
The college runs NCE and diploma programmes. While the NCE is accredited by the National Commission for Colleges of Education, the diploma we offer is an ordinary diploma, not National Diploma.
“The proposed upgrade means making some changes including transferring some courses to somewhere else but I don’t see any of the courses being scrapped altogether.
“If Islamic Studies is transferred to the School of Education, there is nothing wrong with that. Moreover, we made input to the Bill concerning the courses in Shari’a and it is left to the House of Assembly to decide whether to leave the courses here or transfer them to the Ahmadu Bello University or to the Umaru Musa Yar’Adua University.
”If the National Board for Technical Education comes in after the upgrade, it means our Diploma programmes will acquire the status of National Diploma. We should also note that the government has the right to do whatever it wants with any of its institutions as it can even decide to change this place to a school of Nursing.”