Provost of the Federal College of Education (FCE)
Kano, Dr. Rabi Jubirila Muhammed, is the first female
to occupy that office since the college was
established over three decade ago. Mohammed, a
doctor of instructional technology, who was recently
re-appointed for a second term in office, in this
interview with MURTALA MOHAMMED in Kano, spoke
on the school’s bombing by Boko Haram, appraised
the standard of education in Nigeria, teacher training
in colleges of education and the odds against it
among other issues.
HOW did the recent attack by Boko Haram insurgents
in you school happen?
Well, that was the unfortunate incident that befell
our college last Wednesday. Enemies of progress in
their numbers forced their way into our new campus
directly opposite the main campus and went straight
to the lecture theatre, where hundred of innocent
students were receiving lectures. It was so horrible. I
wonder what sort of crime the students committed to
deserve this kind of barbaric treatment.
After bombing the hall, what happened next?
They went on rampage shooting everybody and
from the lecture theatre; the assailants went further
to the faculty where they killed one of our lecturers.
It was a very terrifying experience. We pray Almighty
God continue to protect us in this country. So far, we
have recorded 15 deaths. However, many of the
students that sustained injuries are responding to
treatment at the hospital. For now, the college has
been closed down to reopen on October 8th, and the
Federal Government has taken necessary measures
regarding the issue of security in the school. Of
course, the Minister of Education, Malam Ibrahim
Shekarau was here and we are very grateful for his
urgent attention. So, we are putting appropriate
measures in place to secure the lives of everybody
in the college, while praying and hoping that God
almighty will bring to an end the issue of insecurity
in our country.
What would you consider as some of the
outstanding achievements you recorded during your
first tenure in office?
Well, as you can, see a lot of improvement was
recorded in the area of academics as well as student
population, which increased significantly. Our
programmes were also improved and transformed in
line with the objective of our institution. Currently,
we are working towards preparing teachers for basic
education, and that is why we have introduced
programmes like Early Childcare, while existing ones
are being upgraded to address current demands. So I
can say a lot of changes have taken place here in
FCE Kano, and they are positive changes.
What is the level of accreditation of programmes in
the college?
Here, we don’t have any programme that has failed
accreditation, which means we are still on course.
We have some courses that have gotten full
accreditation and some are still enjoying interim
accreditation. Normally when programmes are
enjoying interim accreditation, all you need do is to
rectify those minor challenges that were observed
and then represent the programmes for
reaccreditation. But we don’t have any programme
that has failed accreditation. Currently, we have
eight courses that are degree programmes and we
are working towards increasing this number. But we
are more concerned and working towards having
autonomy, as that would be better for us than any
form of affiliation. You know when colleges of
education run degree programmes by autonomy, they
award the degree certificates in their names and not
in the name of the affiliated institution. And if that
happens, we shall only present our programme for
accreditation to the National Universities
Commission (NUC).
But right now, we have to pass through the
institution for affiliation. They come here for pre-
accreditation exercise and it is the same university
of affiliation that would present our programmes for
accreditation to NUC. Of course, there are challenges
in the sense that we have to go through the process
of accreditation at two or three different levels.
Are colleges of education in the country worthy, or
have the capacity to award degrees?
I believe so because many colleges of education in
Nigeria have the capacity and required standards to
be given autonomy to run degree programmes.
These include the four older colleges of education
like FCE Kano, FCE Zaria, Adeyemi College of
Education and Albert Ikoku College of Education. And
in terms of facilities and human resources especially
here in FCE Kano, we have all it takes to award
degrees. Obviously if one is given the opportunity,
there would be an input from the Federal
Government to further upgrade the facility and at the
same time the lack of autonomy can even stop
government from giving the colleges certain resource
to build more on the existing facility. So the moment
we have licence to issue our own certificates,
government will come to our aid in improving our
resources and upgrading our standard.
Does this scenario, in any way account for why
colleges of education lose quite a good number of
their academic staff to other tertiary institutions?
You see everybody wants to progress in life. In FCE
Kano today, we train our staff up to PhD level and
after that, many of them still aspire to advance to the
level of professorship. But since the law establishing
colleges of education does not allow us to grow up
to the level, this obviously becomes a minus.
Again the university is a place where professors are
most needed. So, those of us who cannot continue
to wait endlessly have to move to the university
where we can become professors.
So once we are given the license, our PhD holders
who are now seeking to go would remain here
because there is nothing driving them apart from the
need to move ahead in their careers. That is the
reason why we lost most of our PhD holders and
senior lecturers because when the universities
advertise for employment they don’t even ask for
graduate assistants they ask for higher-level
manpower. And that means that the PhD holders
who find it easier to be considered for the job
obviously will go. But, do you know that despite the
fact that people are leaving while some are coming,
the college still boasts more PhD holders presently
than what we got at a point in the 1980s and 1990s,
when the school could not boast 10 PhD holders as
a whole. Now we have far more than what it used to
be
Many believe that ill-equipped teachers churned out
by colleges of education, are largely responsible for
the very poor performances by students in internal
and external examinations?
Well I wouldn’t want to opine that it is the colleges
of education that created all the problems if the
standard of education is experiencing a slump as
you have observed. In colleges of education, with
what we are doing currently in the areas of
restructuring, improving the entire system and
making it suit our needs and with government
providing funding, I don’t believe the colleges of
education are responsible for producing substandard
teachers. Personally, I would say that the society at
large is responsible for some of the things you are
seeing.
For instance, examination malpractice does not
start from colleges of education. Rather, it starts
right from the basic education level, where children
who wrote common entrance examination are told
how to pass the examination through dubious ways.
And as they move on, they still pass through these
nasty hands that do not help them to work hard and
pass so as to be able to defend their certificates. It
is really an unfortunate situation. At the colleges of
education level, we take in products from certain
levels of education, and these are the ones that we
produce teachers from.
In fact, the maximum period they spend here is five
years. So within this period of time, it is not likely
that a corrupted mind from the lower levels of
education can be improved to a certain level of
excellence that you would wish to see. But to God
be the glory, we are stepping up efforts at making
changes and we are doing our best to make sure all
these are checked and sanitised. We are doing so
much to ensure that examination malpractice does
not creep into our examination halls and we always
remind our teachers to realise that they are role
models before the students and in the society. So,
with all these steps, I think there is still hope for a
better future.
Results of the 2014 West African Examination
Council (WAEC)-organised West African Senior
School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) were
considered one of the worst in recent times in
Nigeria. What in your opinion is responsible for this?
In talking about students’ performances in WAEC
examination and their results, there are many factors
we need to look into, as most of them contribute to
the massive failure of our students. In the first
instance, WAEC is a regional body, which
examination is also written by other West African
students. In training candidates for the examination,
you realise that the body that trains the students is
quite different from the body that examines and even
assesses the students’ performances. This is one
factor why the performance may not be as excellent
as one may wish.
In some cases, where you have very few students
being groomed for the examination, they perform
excellently well very well especially in private
schools. But don’t forget that most of our students
are in public schools, where students’ population is
usually very high and the environment almost
always never conducive for learning.
The society itself does not appear to be happy and
willing to train young ones who have enough time to
concentrate on their studies. For a student to study,
understand and perform well, he needs to feed well
and be relatively comfortable with his/her basic
needs. It is sad that most of our children that you
find in public schools don’t even have enough food
to eat. That alone can affect their brain development
and thinking pattern because an uncomfortable
person is trying to solve so many things in his brain
and as such he has little or no time to concentrate
on studies.
In addition there are quite a lot of distractions in
our contemporary society as knowledge is flying all
over and students are caught up in between
knowledge catching and utilisation and trying to
solve problems.
Colleges of education curricula are said to be
obsolete and overloaded. How true is this?
There is knowledge explosion today in our schools
and society. So, when we discover one problem in
the society, government will suggest it should be
added to our curriculum so that our children would
learn about it. That was how General Studies came
about. When political thuggery reared its head, Civic
Education was added and when HIV/AIDS arrived, we
inserted Health Education in the curriculum. Now
that terrorism is the order of the day, only God
knows what would be the next subject to be added.
All these upgrades and what you call overloading the
curriculum are done because a young mind that
is trained early can overcome certain societal
challenges and the curriculum itself would contribute
its quota to solving society’s problems.
One of the major functions that a school plays is to
reshape and gradually transform the society. That is
not effectively achieved in our society because it is
not everybody in the society that is in school.
So, the best we can do is to transform those who
are in school. Unfortunately, when they get to the
wider society, they mingle with others and the
society ends up changing them. That is why it would
be difficult to have total transformation in this
country. But with time, we hope things will change
for good.
Your appointment has just been renewed for a
second and final term in office, what are your plans
for FCE Kano for the next four years?
I sincerely wish that before the end of this second
tenure, FCE, Kano would, God willing, witness a lot of
improvements and all ongoing projects that we
started completed. In our degree programmes, we
hope to secure autonomy so that we can start
issuing our certificates just as we are working hard
to increase the number of the programmes we run
here.
The leadership of the school also intends to
strengthen the existing cordial relationship with
staff, both academic and non-academic. Generally,
we would strive to move the college to the next level
by the grace of God.
Kano, Dr. Rabi Jubirila Muhammed, is the first female
to occupy that office since the college was
established over three decade ago. Mohammed, a
doctor of instructional technology, who was recently
re-appointed for a second term in office, in this
interview with MURTALA MOHAMMED in Kano, spoke
on the school’s bombing by Boko Haram, appraised
the standard of education in Nigeria, teacher training
in colleges of education and the odds against it
among other issues.
HOW did the recent attack by Boko Haram insurgents
in you school happen?
Well, that was the unfortunate incident that befell
our college last Wednesday. Enemies of progress in
their numbers forced their way into our new campus
directly opposite the main campus and went straight
to the lecture theatre, where hundred of innocent
students were receiving lectures. It was so horrible. I
wonder what sort of crime the students committed to
deserve this kind of barbaric treatment.
After bombing the hall, what happened next?
They went on rampage shooting everybody and
from the lecture theatre; the assailants went further
to the faculty where they killed one of our lecturers.
It was a very terrifying experience. We pray Almighty
God continue to protect us in this country. So far, we
have recorded 15 deaths. However, many of the
students that sustained injuries are responding to
treatment at the hospital. For now, the college has
been closed down to reopen on October 8th, and the
Federal Government has taken necessary measures
regarding the issue of security in the school. Of
course, the Minister of Education, Malam Ibrahim
Shekarau was here and we are very grateful for his
urgent attention. So, we are putting appropriate
measures in place to secure the lives of everybody
in the college, while praying and hoping that God
almighty will bring to an end the issue of insecurity
in our country.
What would you consider as some of the
outstanding achievements you recorded during your
first tenure in office?
Well, as you can, see a lot of improvement was
recorded in the area of academics as well as student
population, which increased significantly. Our
programmes were also improved and transformed in
line with the objective of our institution. Currently,
we are working towards preparing teachers for basic
education, and that is why we have introduced
programmes like Early Childcare, while existing ones
are being upgraded to address current demands. So I
can say a lot of changes have taken place here in
FCE Kano, and they are positive changes.
What is the level of accreditation of programmes in
the college?
Here, we don’t have any programme that has failed
accreditation, which means we are still on course.
We have some courses that have gotten full
accreditation and some are still enjoying interim
accreditation. Normally when programmes are
enjoying interim accreditation, all you need do is to
rectify those minor challenges that were observed
and then represent the programmes for
reaccreditation. But we don’t have any programme
that has failed accreditation. Currently, we have
eight courses that are degree programmes and we
are working towards increasing this number. But we
are more concerned and working towards having
autonomy, as that would be better for us than any
form of affiliation. You know when colleges of
education run degree programmes by autonomy, they
award the degree certificates in their names and not
in the name of the affiliated institution. And if that
happens, we shall only present our programme for
accreditation to the National Universities
Commission (NUC).
But right now, we have to pass through the
institution for affiliation. They come here for pre-
accreditation exercise and it is the same university
of affiliation that would present our programmes for
accreditation to NUC. Of course, there are challenges
in the sense that we have to go through the process
of accreditation at two or three different levels.
Are colleges of education in the country worthy, or
have the capacity to award degrees?
I believe so because many colleges of education in
Nigeria have the capacity and required standards to
be given autonomy to run degree programmes.
These include the four older colleges of education
like FCE Kano, FCE Zaria, Adeyemi College of
Education and Albert Ikoku College of Education. And
in terms of facilities and human resources especially
here in FCE Kano, we have all it takes to award
degrees. Obviously if one is given the opportunity,
there would be an input from the Federal
Government to further upgrade the facility and at the
same time the lack of autonomy can even stop
government from giving the colleges certain resource
to build more on the existing facility. So the moment
we have licence to issue our own certificates,
government will come to our aid in improving our
resources and upgrading our standard.
Does this scenario, in any way account for why
colleges of education lose quite a good number of
their academic staff to other tertiary institutions?
You see everybody wants to progress in life. In FCE
Kano today, we train our staff up to PhD level and
after that, many of them still aspire to advance to the
level of professorship. But since the law establishing
colleges of education does not allow us to grow up
to the level, this obviously becomes a minus.
Again the university is a place where professors are
most needed. So, those of us who cannot continue
to wait endlessly have to move to the university
where we can become professors.
So once we are given the license, our PhD holders
who are now seeking to go would remain here
because there is nothing driving them apart from the
need to move ahead in their careers. That is the
reason why we lost most of our PhD holders and
senior lecturers because when the universities
advertise for employment they don’t even ask for
graduate assistants they ask for higher-level
manpower. And that means that the PhD holders
who find it easier to be considered for the job
obviously will go. But, do you know that despite the
fact that people are leaving while some are coming,
the college still boasts more PhD holders presently
than what we got at a point in the 1980s and 1990s,
when the school could not boast 10 PhD holders as
a whole. Now we have far more than what it used to
be
Many believe that ill-equipped teachers churned out
by colleges of education, are largely responsible for
the very poor performances by students in internal
and external examinations?
Well I wouldn’t want to opine that it is the colleges
of education that created all the problems if the
standard of education is experiencing a slump as
you have observed. In colleges of education, with
what we are doing currently in the areas of
restructuring, improving the entire system and
making it suit our needs and with government
providing funding, I don’t believe the colleges of
education are responsible for producing substandard
teachers. Personally, I would say that the society at
large is responsible for some of the things you are
seeing.
For instance, examination malpractice does not
start from colleges of education. Rather, it starts
right from the basic education level, where children
who wrote common entrance examination are told
how to pass the examination through dubious ways.
And as they move on, they still pass through these
nasty hands that do not help them to work hard and
pass so as to be able to defend their certificates. It
is really an unfortunate situation. At the colleges of
education level, we take in products from certain
levels of education, and these are the ones that we
produce teachers from.
In fact, the maximum period they spend here is five
years. So within this period of time, it is not likely
that a corrupted mind from the lower levels of
education can be improved to a certain level of
excellence that you would wish to see. But to God
be the glory, we are stepping up efforts at making
changes and we are doing our best to make sure all
these are checked and sanitised. We are doing so
much to ensure that examination malpractice does
not creep into our examination halls and we always
remind our teachers to realise that they are role
models before the students and in the society. So,
with all these steps, I think there is still hope for a
better future.
Results of the 2014 West African Examination
Council (WAEC)-organised West African Senior
School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) were
considered one of the worst in recent times in
Nigeria. What in your opinion is responsible for this?
In talking about students’ performances in WAEC
examination and their results, there are many factors
we need to look into, as most of them contribute to
the massive failure of our students. In the first
instance, WAEC is a regional body, which
examination is also written by other West African
students. In training candidates for the examination,
you realise that the body that trains the students is
quite different from the body that examines and even
assesses the students’ performances. This is one
factor why the performance may not be as excellent
as one may wish.
In some cases, where you have very few students
being groomed for the examination, they perform
excellently well very well especially in private
schools. But don’t forget that most of our students
are in public schools, where students’ population is
usually very high and the environment almost
always never conducive for learning.
The society itself does not appear to be happy and
willing to train young ones who have enough time to
concentrate on their studies. For a student to study,
understand and perform well, he needs to feed well
and be relatively comfortable with his/her basic
needs. It is sad that most of our children that you
find in public schools don’t even have enough food
to eat. That alone can affect their brain development
and thinking pattern because an uncomfortable
person is trying to solve so many things in his brain
and as such he has little or no time to concentrate
on studies.
In addition there are quite a lot of distractions in
our contemporary society as knowledge is flying all
over and students are caught up in between
knowledge catching and utilisation and trying to
solve problems.
Colleges of education curricula are said to be
obsolete and overloaded. How true is this?
There is knowledge explosion today in our schools
and society. So, when we discover one problem in
the society, government will suggest it should be
added to our curriculum so that our children would
learn about it. That was how General Studies came
about. When political thuggery reared its head, Civic
Education was added and when HIV/AIDS arrived, we
inserted Health Education in the curriculum. Now
that terrorism is the order of the day, only God
knows what would be the next subject to be added.
All these upgrades and what you call overloading the
curriculum are done because a young mind that
is trained early can overcome certain societal
challenges and the curriculum itself would contribute
its quota to solving society’s problems.
One of the major functions that a school plays is to
reshape and gradually transform the society. That is
not effectively achieved in our society because it is
not everybody in the society that is in school.
So, the best we can do is to transform those who
are in school. Unfortunately, when they get to the
wider society, they mingle with others and the
society ends up changing them. That is why it would
be difficult to have total transformation in this
country. But with time, we hope things will change
for good.
Your appointment has just been renewed for a
second and final term in office, what are your plans
for FCE Kano for the next four years?
I sincerely wish that before the end of this second
tenure, FCE, Kano would, God willing, witness a lot of
improvements and all ongoing projects that we
started completed. In our degree programmes, we
hope to secure autonomy so that we can start
issuing our certificates just as we are working hard
to increase the number of the programmes we run
here.
The leadership of the school also intends to
strengthen the existing cordial relationship with
staff, both academic and non-academic. Generally,
we would strive to move the college to the next level
by the grace of God.
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