ARMSTRONG ALLAHMAGANI, Bauchi-
As part of its cooperate social responsibility, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) has established an Information Computer Technology Center (ICT) for use by the remedial students of the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi.
Speaking while commissioning the ICT Center, which is made up of 40 computers and an e-library, The Senior Procurement Officer of NPA, Tukur Buba, said that the gesture was to help the remedial students improve their knowledge of ICT so as to become successful in their academic pursuit.
Mr. Buba charged the students to maintain the facilities in the Center by guarding them against any form of vandalization.
He said: “The management of Nigerian Ports Authority is behind you, is eager and anxious to see your success in all your endeavours and they want these facilities to be used for the upliftment of education in this institution. “Please and please, make a good use of these facilities so that our children unborn will come and use these facilities”.
“Make good use of it and guard it against vandalization because these days, people regard government properties as nobody’s properties. But this time around, I want you to regard these properties as if they were you own personal properties because after you make use of them, your children and grandchildren will come and make use of it maybe even with a better technology.”
The Vice Chancellor, ATBU, Professor Muhammed Abdulazeez, expressed appreciation to the NPA for donating the Center saying that it will help the students reduce the search for physical books.
He opined that most students fail the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination mainly because of their lack of the knowledge of ICT.
He said these would help the university transition from analog to digital.
The VC stated: “We have remedial students who are about writing UTME, most students fail not because they don’t know the answer but because they don’t have knowledge about ICT. This is an advantage to such students because they can practice using these facilities.
“I want to urge the Directorate that all tests for remedials should now turn to be CBT so that they will be conversant with the ICT and upgrade their knowledge because these are UTME questions.”
He also enjoined the students to take care of these facilities because, according to him, “if you destroy them, you are destroying our money and if you keep it, you’re indirectly keeping our money. Know that whatever you do to these systems, someone somewhere will do it to you.”
Abdulazeez declared that institution targets that not just the students of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University will benefit from it but students outside the University will also come to use the UTME facilities “because we’re trying to make sure that everybody in Nigeria has access to quality education and access to university education.”
In an interview, the Director of Basic and Remedial Studies of ATBU, Professor Hamma Sabo, said that the Center would have a great impact on the students.
He said: “This is a digital laboratory. Library is very critical in the development of education. In fact, any academic institution without a library is completely academically irrelevant”.
“Library has migrated to an information science where you can communicate, get latest information, latest books do all your information activities.”
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