5,000 students a good start for Zaria education varsity – Prof Bunkure

Prof. Yahaya Isa Bunkure is the pioneer Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University of Education Zaria (FUEZ), an institution that evolved from one of the oldest colleges of education in Northern Nigeria, speaks on the transformation of the institution, the challenges confronting teacher education and the declining attractiveness of the teaching profession. He says millions of young Nigerians who aspire to become teachers acquire the requisite qualifications but are often discouraged by poor welfare and working conditions. He, therefore, calls for urgent government intervention to restore the dignity of the profession and save the education sector from further decline.

It’s been a year since you assumed office. Let me start by asking: how far so far?

Alhamdulillah (Glory be to Allah). I was appointed by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on September 3, 2025. We were asked to stay back and receive some form of induction from the Ministry of Education, so I reported on September 17, 2025. The reception accorded me was marvellous.

There were insinuations before my coming that some people in the university did not want the university to succeed and that I might be rejected by some of them. Contrary to those insinuations, however, when I came, both the good people of Zaria and the entire university community received me warmly. They gave me a wonderful reception when I reported, and that is something I will never forget.

I started all over again because this place was formerly a college of education, and what the leaders then knew was essentially the college of education system. You know, it is not always easy to bring about change.

So, I had to find my way around and engage the people, telling them that I was here to be a partner in progress. I was not here to fire people, as had been exaggerated. There were claims that if the university took off, many staff would lose their jobs and positions.

I can tell you that, up to this moment, I have never put my biro to paper to dismiss or expel a member of staff, not even a student. I have not done that. That is why, every day, more people are coming forward with greater cooperation, and things are moving.

Leadership is not an easy task. You cannot always have your cake and eat it. There are challenges here and there, but because of the cooperation I am receiving from my colleagues, especially the principal officers I met here, I am getting things done with relative ease.

Many Nigerians are still asking, trying to understand the wisdom behind converting colleges of education to universities. I personally attended a teachers’ college, so I am a qualified teacher. I don’t know, maybe as someone who has been in that terrain, what is the wisdom behind converting colleges of education to universities?

Yes, there are good reasons for that. We used to have Grade II teacher training colleges. As you said, you were a trained teacher, but teacher training colleges are no longer fashionable. I think that system was phased out some years ago.

If you remember, before the 6-3-3-4 system, there was a 6-7 system. It was seven years of primary education and five years of secondary education, followed by tertiary education.

Now, the NCE programme is no longer as prominent as it used to be. Although the policy has not changed that the minimum teaching qualification is an NCE, Nigeria has produced a substantial number of NCE graduates. The Ministry of Education also noticed that there are more teachers at the lower level than at the higher level, especially in the core sciences and English. There are not enough qualified teachers to teach at the senior secondary school level.

So, the Federal Ministry of Education saw the wisdom in converting some colleges of education into universities of education. At least, the mandate is still there. The colleges have not been relieved of their mandate; rather, the mandate has been taken to an even higher level.

There was also an assessment of teaching personnel in our primary and secondary schools, and it was found that about 60 to 70 per cent are NCE graduates.

Only about 20 to 30 per cent are graduates of universities teaching in our secondary schools, and that has affected the quality of students we admit into our universities.

If you could recall, a graduate with a lower qualification in the past could compete with a present-day first-class student because something is going wrong at the primary and secondary school levels. There are not enough qualified teachers, and that is why some of these colleges need to be converted into universities of education so that more highly qualified teachers can be produced.

You occupied a similar position in Kano, is that correct?

Yes. It was a state-owned college of education, and there was this programme from the Federal Government. Every five years, a team would be constituted to assess what was going wrong and what was working in these institutions, with a view to correcting any anomalies identified.

So, when they went to Sa’adatu Rimi College of Education, where I was the provost, instead of finding faults with us, they realised that what we had done was enough to qualify the college for upgrading to university status.

As I told you, the government was looking for ways to produce more qualified teachers. Therefore, the committee saddled with that responsibility advised the government to consider upgrading Sa’adatu Rimi College of Education.

Was it upgraded while you were the provost?

It was upgraded and, incidentally, I was also appointed as the first Vice-Chancellor of that same college of education, which became a university of education.

What did you do to deserve the elevation?

Of course, hard work and honesty. I don’t want to say honesty directly because it would sound as if I am blowing my own trumpet. We simply did our best to give to Caesar what belonged to Caesar when I was there.

I was fair to the system generally. I was fair to my colleagues, including members of the management, and my loyalty to the government of the day also helped me achieve a lot.

Having that background in mind and coming here to the Federal University of Education as the pioneer Vice-Chancellor, it was a critical moment because there was a transition. What were the challenges you saw on the ground?

There were about two major challenges. One is still ongoing. As a university, you cannot run without professors, and one of the biggest challenges I met was that we had a good number of lecturers who were chief lecturers.

Some of them had been chief lecturers for nearly 20 years or even longer. According to them, every chief lecturer was supposed to be automatically converted to the position of professor. That was the first obstacle I encountered.

I told them that, according to the National Universities Commission (NUC), the equivalent of a chief lecturer is a senior lecturer in a university.

Is that someone with a PhD?

Yes, with a PhD. A chief lecturer in a college of education can only be equated with a senior lecturer in a university. So, that became a very big issue for us.

When I came, there was already a committee set up by the Governing Council to examine the academic dossiers of all the chief lecturers seeking elevation to the position of professor.

About 117 of them were initially considered to be qualified. When I came on board, however, I set up another committee to review the work of the committee established by the council.

We worked tirelessly and used templates borrowed from sister universities, especially Ahmadu Bello University, Bayero University and the University of Jos. We eventually developed our own appropriate placement template.

When we did that, we could only find 43 chief lecturers qualified to become professors out of 118 or 119, and that did not go down well with members of the academic staff.

They thought someone had come to thwart their progress. I told them that I was not there to thwart anybody’s progress or efforts. But this is a university, and universities are regulated by the National Universities Commission. There is no way we can place people outside the laws and regulations provided by the NUC. That is exactly what we did.

What is the student population now, and is it encouraging coming to a university of education?

It is indeed encouraging. You know the NCE programme is being phased out, so you may wonder how we are going to run the institution. More students mean more funds to run the institution, while fewer students mean less funding.

But even with the phasing out of the NCE programme, the first set of students we admitted numbered 5,000, and all of them were qualified.

More than 6,000 people applied, but only about 5,000 satisfied our admission requirements. They are spread across the 31 departments we have.

What are some of your programmes?

We run programmes in seven faculties, including the sciences and education. In education, we have the Faculty of General Education, Faculty of Allied Education, Faculty of Science Education, Faculty of Technical and Vocational Education, Faculty of Languages and Faculty of Social Sciences.

In each faculty, we have a number of departments. For instance, the Faculty of Sciences has about seven departments, while the Faculty of Languages has about six. Altogether, we have 31 functional departments for a start.

You have enough manpower?

In terms of the number of staff on the ground, we have enough. But there is a formula from the NUC which requires universities to have a sufficient number of staff at the top, in the middle and at the lower levels.

Before the elevation of the 43 staff to the position of professors, our problem was that we had virtually no professors at the top level. What we normally did was to bring in professors from outside the university.

Even when it was a college, it ran degree programmes in affiliation with some of the major universities. When I came, I met the presence of Ahmadu Bello University and Usmanu Danfodiyo University here.

Whenever there was going to be accreditation, we hired professors on sabbatical, and that is legitimate as far as the NUC is concerned.

Even when they are from ABU, for instance, and they come here for accreditation, the NUC recognises the arrangement as legitimate. That was how the programmes were run in affiliation with these major universities.

But in our own case, Alhamdulillah, we now have 43 professors for a start. I want to tell you that none of the newly converted colleges of education has what we have in terms of manpower.