The best is good for PLASU

By Katdapba Yunana Gobum

It is not out of place to revisit the history of the 17 year old Plateau State University, Bokkos; for many obvious reasons; starting from September 2005.

Yet, if it must be done, most of those who who are the harshest critics of the various Vice Chancellors, may have a rethink, particularly if they are told of the conditions under which they operated.

Like they say, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. If we wish for the understanding of the university’s trajectory, it should be in total agreement of how an institution should stay on course through due processes of administration.

Truly speaking, it would be out of place to reduce whatever has been contributed by all past administrators. They remain a signpost of development on the university campus.

To reduce the historical contributions of Profs John Wokton Wade (2005-2010), Nenfort Gomwalk (2010-2013), Doknan Descent Danjuma Sheni (2013-2918), Yohanna Daniel Izam (2018-2023), Benard Malau Matur (2023-2024) in the development of the university would amount to journalistic laziness.

Yours sincerely would never want to be counted for such an exercise. In their various persuasions, all of them, egg heads, have gone through the mills administratively and in academics, they can be relied upon on the assignment.

But situating their historical antecedence and contributions, such are enough to appreciate what they have added over the years, for the university to get to the present station.

Those who have followed developments in the university may be quick to point to certain alleged lapses of government over the years, which may have forced the Ivory Tower to remain largely inconsistent of the course the university should have followed.

Such institutions in Nigeria may not be found without the incumbency factor of the government in power. All the Vice Chancellors appointed in the past and future have reason to want to succeed while they lasted, despite the ever noticed presence of its proprietor.

Thus, within the limits of what may have been available, and for some of the alleged frustrations they may have endured; each one of them added value in several ways than one.

The university is where it is placed today consequent upon the efforts deployed in building it by the administrators over the years.

In the current circumstance where Prof Shedrack Gaya Best holds court, a number of things have happened; and they are reflective of the new drive to change the narrative that has come to be of PLASU lately.

There is no denying this fact: Bokkos local government has remained a sore point for insecurity for years. Scholarship does not flourish in this kind of environment. It will never!

The founders did not envisaged that a time would come when students and lecturers would be in their lecture halls guarded or accompanied by truck loads of security personnel. And sadly losing staff and students in the process.

But the situation calls for sober reflection of what has hit the local community where the university is situated; and by extension a concern for the state and its people.

Since coming on the saddle on February 12, 2024, Professor Shedrack Gaya Best started on a sprint. There are initiatives executed that are speaking well of him, and for which the university is being applauded.

Things can not be different in running Plateau State University. Whatever vision the Vice Chancellor has can never be any different from that of the Governor, being its Visitor. They can’t work at cross purposes.

The responsibility, given to Prof Shedrack Gaya Best; whether in acting capacity or substantively; he is expected to change the face of the university by bringing it to acceptable standard, to play the role it was set up for.

For those who know, Plateau State University has gone through circles of turbulence and uncertainty. It takes a huge amount of resolve to bring the needed changes to the institution that has been described as a ‘village university’.

Despite numerous challenges, the university has trudged and made progress in different areas. That it has grown in different dimensions since he arrived is the fact that he ‘didn’t waste time criticising’ what was done in the past; rather, he settled down to ‘improve on it’.

The institution has grown in different facets that any university should. In the words of Prof Shedrack Gaya Best: I have been keen in making sure that the university does not look like the neighbouring village. We cannot be in a village and then resemble the village’.

To get an environment that had largely remained topsy-turvy, the system needed to be normalised. ‘We began to clean the university’, after an appointment he calls ‘unusual’, and to be fair, it needed enough guts to get it done.

Prof Gaya arrived Bokkos with enough dose of it; ready to rebuild the confidence, working with the government, staff (and its unions) and security to remedy what was becoming an increasingly uninhabitable environment.

First, apart from settling accounts with university unions, he confronted what was becoming a laissez-faire attitude, where it was difficult for students to pay fees, insisting they were lords who should be respected, and exempted from such payments.

To ensure that the battle is won on different fronts, a number of things; though energy sapping have so far been executed. Thus, to ward off herders from the precinct of the university, the fencing of its perimeter walls through TETFund with observetory towers and CCTV are underway.

Even though it is a battle, he believes he is ‘winning, I don’t believe that a university should be a grazing ground for any body, hence we have to stop the herders from extending their destructive attitude into the university’.

It is interesting that the university began with ‘three faculties; today, there are nine with a School of Postgraduate Studies, and 10 Directorates. In the next session, we’ll introduce two new faculties: Medical and Pharmaceutical Sciences’.

With students population hitting the ten thousand mark, about 85-90 percent live off campus on account of insufficient hostels. That is being worked upon to be reduced through partnership with Bua and Dangote Cement to build hostels to enable a sizeable number of students live on campus.

PLASU, from all intent and purposes is stable; the hitherto hostile students-school relationship has given way to dialogue and understanding. The environment is wearing a new look, even as its physical composition has taken an identity worthy to be called a university.

The hope in the future in making road network, hostels, buses, water, ICT, electricity, solar available and strategic and many more are some of the acting Vice Chancellor’s major preoccupation.

But above all, the university must have to grow to compete with its peers, knowing that ‘the scope of education is that you can tell it’s boundaries’. While getting staff to build capacity, the institution must stop ‘inbreeding’ of Plateau people alone, but ensure that deversity is encouraged.

The university should attract people all over the world; knowing that the strength of a university is in the capacity of its staff.

In his current position, Prof Shedrack Gaya Best knows that an opportunity has been given, no matter its nomenclature, it will be apt to make a statement in the assignment; by making it better and efficient.