Ahmadu Bello University - History - Development Through The Middle 1970s

Development Through The Middle 1970s

At that point (in 1966) Dr. Alexander was succeeded as ABU Vice Chancellor by Dr. Ishaya Shuaibu Audu, a pediatrician and (at the time he was appointed) associate professor at the University of Lagos. Audu had been born in Wusasa, near Zaria, in 1928. A native Hausa, he was not only ABU’s first Nigerian Vice Chancellor, but also a northerner. However, his membership in the Hausa Christian community of Wusasa probably had some later impact on his tenure.

ABU was seriously affected by the coups and the anti-Igbo riots of 1966. But, under Dr. Audu’s leadership, ABU was to grow and develop at an even faster pace. Growth in student enrollments had been held hostage to growth and development of A-level training at the secondary school level. So beginning in 1968-69 ABU broke free from the British three-year heritage and established the School of Basic Studies to provide advanced secondary pre-degree training on campus. Students who entered through the School of Basic Studies essentially embarked on a four-year program toward a bachelor degree.

Opposed initially by some, the School proved a great success and enrollments expanded even more rapidly. By its tenth year ABU total enrollments including non- and pre-degree programs were put at over 7,000 of which more than half were in degree programs. In its first ten years, the University of Ibadan produced 615 graduates. At ABU the corresponding figure after 10 years was 2,333 first degrees, along with several advanced degrees.

From the beginning, ABU was remarkable for the breadth of its ambition. In its various institutions, but mainly on or close by the main campus by Samaru, ABU was creating a range of programs that only the very most comprehensive of U.S. state universities could have matched. Ranging far beyond the standard fields of the arts, languages, social sciences and sciences, it included engineering, medicine (the Zaria hospital was an ABU teaching hospital), pharmacy, architecture, and a wide variety of agricultural departments including veterinary medicine. What was called the Kongo campus just outside the old city in Zaria taught public administration, but also carried out a program of in-service training for local government throughout the north. The Faculty of Law was based at the Kongo campus. The Faculty of Education not only taught education courses but also managed the Advanced Teacher’s Colleges in the northern states. At the Kano campus (now called Abdullahi Bayero College) ABU taught courses in Hausa, Arabic and Islamic studies.

ABU was likewise remarkable among Nigeria’s universities for the breadth and national character of its student recruitment. ABU had been founded to be the University of Northern Nigeria. Yet, more than any other of Nigeria’s universities, ABU has served students from every state of the Nigerian federation.

Professorial staffing to serve the burgeoning student enrollments and course offerings was a potential limitation during this period. In the early 1970s relatively abundant funding made it possible to send some senior academic staff to overseas institutions to complete advanced degrees. A small but increasing number of Nigerians with Ph.D.s or other advanced degrees were returning from abroad (but ABU had to compete with the other Nigerian universities to recruit them). In the meantime, appointment of expatriate teaching staff was essential and it expanded greatly and diversified in terms of nationalities drawn from. Vice Chancellor Audu endeavored to balance the goals of Nigerianization (and “northernization”) of ABU’s professorial staff with the commitment to maintaining all programs at an international level of academic quality. By 1975, this balance was strained. The teaching faculty remained more than half expatriate overall; at senior levels still more so. The development of Nigerian staffing (and especially of northern-origin teaching staff) was perceived as too slow. In 1975, ABU turned toward a much heavier emphasis on internal staff development as it adopted the Graduate Assistantship program. Under this program, the best graduates from the departments’ undergraduate programs are recruited to join the department as staff-in-training and undertake advanced training as they also gain on-the-job experience. Within a few years, a significant proportion of ABU senior staff were products of the internal training programs. From 1975, the proportion of expatriate teaching staff diminished rapidly.