The outgone Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Professor Abubakar Rasheed, has formally handed over to his deputy , Mr. Chris Maiyaki.
At the handover ceremony in Abuja, Prof. Rasheed said , President Bola Tinubu has approved his exist with effect from June 30, 2023.
He said that the new executive secretary would be steering the affairs of the commission in an acting capacity until the appointment of a substantive executive secretary by the President.
“Due to my desire to spend my active years in the classroom, I decided to write the President through the Federal Ministry of Education three years before my tenure expired.
“Upon receiving the approval, I wrote to the Vice Chancellor of Bayero University, Kano to return to the classroom with effect from July 1, 2023.
“I want to thank everyone for your faith and confidence in NUC, I appreciate you for supporting the management of NUC because I am lucky to have worked with confident staff,” he said.
Rasheed appreciated the counter-base union, especially the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), and the support received from sister agencies throughout his tenure.
When asked about any case of corruption after his resignation, he said he resigned voluntarily from office and not because of fear of alleged corruption.
“As far as I know, I voluntarily resigned from office. I actually resigned two years ago after the expiration of my first tenure in office because I did not want to come back.
“I had already gone to the classroom before my reappointment. This is because I don’t want to retire anywhere outside the classroom and have run the organization to the best of my abilities,” he said.
Responding, the Acting Executive Secretary, Mr Chris Maiyaki, commended the outgone boss, saying his achievements were unprecedented for all to see.
Maiyaki promised to do his best to consolidate the good work of Rasheed while counting on the support of the staff and management of the commission and by extension, the academic community of the country.
“We will sustain that momentum as we believe the future will throw up challenges in the digital atmosphere we are in. We will continue the reinvention of the pivoted role of university education,” he said.
Earlier, Rasheed reported that he was first appointed on August 1, 2016, for an initial tenure of five years. Later reappointed on August 1, 2021, and was expected to be in this position till July 31, 2026, until his formal resignation
In the same vein, NUC tells ASUU to stop misleading Nigerians on varsity curriculum.
The National Universities Commission (NUC) has urged the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to stop misleading Nigerians about the new varsity curriculum.
The commission in a statement by Deputy Executive Secretary, Academics, Dr Noel Saliu, in Abuja, said contrary to claims by ASUU, all universities were carried along in the development of the Core Curriculum Minimum Academic Standards.
Addressing the specific issues raised by ASUU, Saliu said that the assertion that there was no official communication from NUC to the Universities on the review of the Benchmark Minimum Academic Standard (BMAS) was not correct.
Vice-Chancellors can attest to the fact that the commission has been communicating with them on the issue over the last five years.
”In addition, several virtual and on-site meetings were held to intimate them of the curriculum review and provide them with updates from time to time.
”The claim that there is no evidence to show that the universities were involved in the true sense of revision of the BMAS development and the subsequent implementation of the CCMAS in the university is also far from the truth.”
He added that the curriculum review process started in 2018 with experts on various subjects in Nigerian universities producing the draft documents.
The Deputy Executive Secretary said that the draft was further forwarded to other experts in Nigerian universities for their inputs.
”Comments received from universities that responded formed part of the working documents forwarded to the various curriculum review panels,” he said.
Saliu added that when the initial drafts of the CCMAS were ready, they were also circulated amongst Nigerian academics, and their inputs were synthesised and incorporated into the respective programmes.
He however reminded ASUU that the process of getting and incorporating inputs from Nigerian Universities had been the tradition of NUC since 1989, and had not faltered.
