January 23, 2022

The University of Maiduguri says it is one of the best universities in the country in spite of security challenges in its location. It also said that the university’s Centre for Peace, Diplomatic and Development got $300,000 grant from MacArthur Foundation to conduct researches.

Prof. Aliyu Shugaba, the Vice- Chancellor of the university, expressed disclosed these at the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) forum in Abuja.

Shugaba who buttressed his claim of excellence with the National Universities Commission (NUC) evidences, said that the institution had records of successes in different areas to its credit.

He said that the university had been delivering on its mandate, especially in the area of continuous academic activities and service to the community, in spite the security challenges in the region.

“We have been able to record some successes even in difficult areas. There was no day we close the university even at the peak of the insurgency.

“In fact there are evidences to suggest that, even NUC agrees that we are one of the best universities in the country.

“NUC has indicated clearly that our own affiliation with other colleges of education have received very good mentorship from us,” he said.

He observed that at the time the insurgency was very high, NUC could not raise a single team to go to Maiduguri for the purpose of accreditation.

“So we were granted a waiver to continue to do our mandate of teaching, research and community service.

“Then some years after when the things started easing off we now had the situation where NUC started sending teams to come and accredit our programmes.

“We went through accreditation and got full accreditation for some of our programmes and in a few of them we got interim accreditation but we continued to work hard and got accredited,” he said.

He further said that presently, all the programmes of the university  had full accreditation except “Civil and Water Resources Engineering.

“But we have put in enough resources; we have injected about N200 million through the appropriation budget even the Borno government has also injected some facilities”.

Shugaba also said that in recent years the university had started recording success in research, saying that it recorded about five patents and had breakthrough in registering them.

“We are now looking at the commercialisation of them.

“Also our own College of Medical Sciences has been designated earlier on since 1986 as centre of excellence likewise the faculty of law,” he explained.

On the issue of the grant, he said that the university was engaging with the Foundation to be able to conduct some researches in the areas of peace and development.

According to him, there has been an internal funding from the university but it only allows the staff to be trained either within the university or outside the university.

“To go abroad, we have always relied on TETFund allocation for academic staff training and development for both masters and PhD programmes, where they are allowed on designated areas acceptable to the university senate.

“Also, individual staff efforts lead them to get sponsorship from donor agencies for scholarship on particular areas of research.

“But with the insecurity that has been happening in the region, many international organisations are finding better ways to assist the university to conduct research and other things.

“Also, our Centre for Peace, Diplomatic and Development studies was granted 300,000 dollars by MacArthur to be able to conduct some researches particularly researches that touch on peace and development,’’ he said.