All the people of Sokoto and their historically and culturally linked people of Kebbi and Zamfara states should be celebrating the prospects of another university in Sokoto state. Even if it is being established by aliens from outside Nigeria or the geopolitical zone of the Northwest, an additional university comes with its multiple benefits for which universities all over the world, bring to their host communities.
The significance of knowledge is so basic to humans that Muslims are enjoined by the Holy Messenger of Allah SWT, Prophet Muhamnad SAW to: “Go even onto the labd of Sinh in search of knowledge.” Sihn, China, was then regarded as the furthest place to the Arabian world, birth place of Islam.
A university is universal and cosmopolitan because of it attracts a sizeable figure of its students, academic and nonacademic workforce from lands and climes far beyond its place of location. The ensuing broadened tapestry of cross cultural mixing that goes on over time ultimately enriches the texture of the culture and world view of the host communities. Conversely, the names of the people, their cultural ways and values become more widely known and appreciated as students and scholars who come to draw from the fountain of light eventually become their ambassadors in faraway lands and communities.
Sokoto, Zamfara and Kebbi axis stand to gain from the prestige and pride that an additional university would bring to them. This is the more so, that the dreamed university is being established by one of their own, “a Son of the Soil”, to put it in the Nigerian parlance: Senator Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko. Talk of the likes of Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, Igbenedion University, Edo State, among others. The icing to the cake in the case of the proposed privately owned university in Sokoto is that, it confers on the people the pride of a blaze trailer in the Northwest and in fact, the entirety of the North of Nigeria.
However, beyond the excitements and positive vibes being generated by the plans of Senator Wamakko to establish a university in the Heart of the Caliphate, some pertinent and sober questions that border on skepticism, pessimism and indeed, suspicion are being asked by enlightened, rational minds around Sokoto and beyond.
Firstly, the timing of the announcement appears curious to some observers who suspect that the idea may be no more than a political step to buoy the senator’s dicey political clout and esteem. Senator Wamakko, now engaged in a pitched battlefield with Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, is seen in certain quarters of doing and saying things dramatic and appealing in the public domain even if such were unattainable, fantastic dreams. Provided it momentarily raises his stature while diminishing that of his rival, let the devil care about the long term consequences of falsehood and deception. Same as reasons of populism and cravings for bolstered political profile have been given as the motivation for his recent failed free fumigation exercise against mosquitoes in parts of the state.
A University of Science and Technology? That, not a few think, is a tall order because of the high capital out lay required for equipment, laboratories, workshops and related facilities in such an institution in the modern sense. The highly specialized professionals needed on the academic staff list of a university worthy of that name, science and technology also, don’t come easy. Unless if one is having in mind a modest science and technical secondary glorified as a university, we should be talking and looking at tens of Billions of Naira to be sunk even at the foundation and start of the project.
As a former governor whose administration built a university, Senator Wamakko should be very well conscious of the huge funds that goes into a university project. Even with the vast government resources at his disposal, his administration’s Sokoto State University could not go beyond an administrative block, two hostels and a row of lecture halls with bare capacity for a modest number of students. And that was after the government claimed to have sunk tens of billions of Naira in a long span of seven years.
Just by the way, though and best a topic of its own for another day, people are also asking why did the construction firm, Mac Namera, abandoned the project of the Sokoto State University after doing less than 20% of work even as it had been paid the contract sum fully upfront? Why was the government paying the contractor in cash, humungous sums, in billions and hundreds of millions instead of through the banking system? Mac Namera was at that time deregistered in Ireland for insolvency thereby bringing up the questions: will the senator be paying cash and to an insolvent construction firm?
The fundamental issue of funding has further given rise to some people taking the Wamakko initiative with a “pinch of salt”. How wealthy is Senator Magatakarda Wamakko? This question is pertinent because, Senator Wamakko has been in the public service all his life and, all his benefits or, entirety of his emoluments put together as savings, cannot amount to what is needed to build the university worthy of that name.
Skeptics suspicious of the honesty and feasibility of the Wamakko University and who hinge their reservations on the financial wherewithal for its execution, believe that the Senator on his own, cannot and, should not possess the magnitude of the requisite capital.
Abubakar Alhassan wrote from Kofar Atiku Sokoto
