Welcome address by the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Sunusi Mamman
In the name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful.
It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all on behalf of the University Governing Council, Senate, Management, Staff and Students of Umaru Musa Yar’adua University to this young and promising Institution. As the 4th and pioneer home grown Vice-Chancellor, I accepted the challenge of leading Umaru Musa Yar’adua University through a process of transformational change. I am happy to observe that you are part of a supportive, respectful and safe community that will always strive to achieve greatness in the information epoch.
As the Vice-Chancellor, I am determined to build on our well-established position as one of the best universities in Nigeria. I will instill in the University, positive strengths that will make ours distinctive and quite inspiring. Through good leadership with effective and efficient administration, functional and high quality academic programmes will be in place. We will enhance teaching and research to promote functional entrepreneurial experience to support scholarship.
We shall expose students to functional knowledge of entrepreneurship and ensure that they develop skills that will make them fend for themselves through a carefully designed programme in the business world so that at the end of their study, they will be employers of labour instead of job seekers. Our efforts shall entail engaging employers, businesses, and researchers to equip students with access to the kind of people they are looking for: people like you. Based on a clear vision that invests in talent development, we have strategies that will take the University over the challenges of the 21st Century and make a difference in the field of education across states, countries and continents.
It is important to state that our aspiration is to offer students with opportunities for high quality university education that will bring out the best in them so as to stand tall through the test of time and to equip them to face the challenges of a globalized economy. Thus, building your future begins from the Umaru Musa Yar’adua University, you are to explore our academic atmosphere to better your life aspirations. This University has an exciting environment such that if you strive and remain focused you will reach the zenith of your dream. Therefore, you are to concentrate your utmost attention to learning as well as research for the development of human society.
Educational excellence comes through hard work, dedication, self-discipline, respect for others and obedience to constituted authorities. You are not just here for the acquisition of literacy and numerical efficiency or other skills. Nor are you here to be prepared as employable entities after your sojourn. But you are here to acquire the knowledge that foster values which makes for good citizenship. The administration would within our ability adequately provide the amenities and facilities in the context of global best practices to ensure such dream becomes a reality. We would pattern the scope of the curricular and content of your programmes in tune with the established ones to arouse your curiosity about the efficacy of received knowledge to investigate the efficiency of equipment and operational procedures. Such a system would also give room for you to devise alternative processes and models which can perform at higher levels of efficiency.
With the support of the Management and relevant stakeholders, Umaru Musa Yar’adua University will visualize itself to become a vanguard institution that will gain respect of the world through academic excellence by providing the highest quality education for students from around the globe. There is a management philosophy which opines that people tend to follow a leader through whom they perceive their own personal aspirations.
To the members of staff of this University, I know that comfort provokes a staff to give his/her best and be more productive in service delivery. Hence, efforts within the purview of financial capability would be geared towards ensuring a conducive working atmosphere for the staff to enable each to contribute positively towards our efforts to make the University a world-class institution.
Staff appraisals and promotions would be transparently and judiciously carried out as and when due. The feedback mechanism created in an appraisal modality would enable an aggrieved staff to notify the Management of any irregularities or perverted judgment. In the same vein, all qualified staff shall be encouraged to seek higher degrees internally or externally, staff development through conferences, seminars and workshops shall also be given priority attention by the administration.
There is no gainsaying, the fact that, students are the most important resources in the knowledge – transfer industry. There is a public outcry about the declining quality of education in the country. Such outcry is justified. Education is the matrix for national development. It is just a system meant to develop the creative ability of individuals to make them productive and self-reliant. It must be admitted that the range of tools being used in the educational system today is wider and more sophisticated than what was available in the years past. Yet, the academic products then were far better. It is people that make a system to work. You are the people.
There must be a promise on the part of all stakeholders of good conduct, personal integrity, selflessness, zero tolerance to all forms of vices including cultism and all morality that would provide a fertile soil for your advancement. The Management on its part would ensure there is no interruption in the academic process so as to afford each student graduate within the specified period for his or her course of study and staff to advance in their professed career.
God bless you all.
Prof. Sunusi Mamman
Vice Chancellor