The Chairman of the visitation panel to the Taraba State University, Prof. Josiah Sabo-Kente on Thursday said the University Governing Council needed a total overhaul to save the institution.
Kente, who disclosed this while interacting with journalists in Jalingo said the pattern and frequent turnover in the appointment of the Chairman of the Governing Council without a university administration experience has adversely affected the implementation of the university’s strategic goals, policies and direction.
According to him, the university which is currently running 53 programmes has only 36 Professors, 45 Readers and 59 Senior Lecturers with some departments having only one Professor and 18 non academic staff, the practice he said was unacceptable.
Kente further explained that the university faced obvious deficit in academic staff across its faculties and departments with only 609 tenured academic staff members compared to the 1,819 non-academic staff.
“Out of the number of academic staff, 218 are graduate assistants in training and 140 visiting, adjunct or sabbatical staff in the institution. This is against the NUC benchmark of 70 per cent academic staff and 30 per cent non-academic staff.
“The university has since its inception in 2008, operated a poor accounting system. At a point from 2012 to 2016, the university operated without a cash book, making it difficult to reconcile financial records, but we used financial experts on the panel to make sense of the financial spendings within the period.
“Financial infractions from 2010 to 2023 in the institution reveals significant discrepancies and irregularities with the grand total of these financial infractions amounting to over N3,5bn.
“This underscores the urgent need for a comprehensive investigation of the university’s financial management practices, including handling of statutory allocations and internally generated revenue,” he explained.
According to him the university obtained an unauthorised loan of N1.5bn with Zenith Bank plc which was revalidated in March 2022 and currently has outstanding liabilities of N4.8bn, including unpaid salaries and third- party deductions.
He noted that the panel report highlighted infrastructural challenges such as lighting, water shortage, insufficient medical facilities among others.
The Visitor to the university, Gov. Agbu Kefas of Taraba had on 24th December, 2023 constituted a visitation panel to the university with a 12 point terms of reference
This was with a view to identifying the challenges confronting the institution to enable government intervene and reposition the institution in line with the administration’s free education policy.
Reports say that Gov. Kefas, who had earlier received the report promised to implement the recommendations of the panel as contained in the report for the good of the institution. (
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