NOUN VC Focuses On Staff Development To Check Brain Drain

Muhyideen Jimoh
Dec, Wed, 2024

Education

NOUN VC focuses on staff development to check brain drain

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By Emmanuel Afonne

Prof. Olufemi Peters, Vice-Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), says the institution will “do everything possible” to prevent the migration of its staff to other countries.

Peters said this in Abuja at the unveiling of an application and registration app developed by Africa Centre of Excellence on Technology Enhanced Learning (ACETEL), managed by the university.

He regretted that NOUN had, in the past, watched helplessly as some of its staff, who were among the pillars of their units, moved to other establishments and other countries, in search of better opportunities.

According to Peters, time has come to put an end to such development where the institution trains and develops its workforce for others to poach.

“I will not forget that there are some of our staff who got employment to work abroad; some of them were members of our ICT unit,” he fumed.

He said that efforts would, henceforth, be geared towards developing the capacity of staff to discourage them from looking elsewhere.

Peters urged ACETEL to utilise its facilities to the fullest, especially the recently inaugurated registration app and the university data centre.

He said that ACETEL was now ready to admit international students with the inauguration of its application and registration portal.

“We have about 150 International students registered with this centre and their payment has been a bit difficult, but with this new app, they will be able to pay directly to our remitta and become our students.

“First, I must say that this development is a requirement; what we are doing here is a requirement of the funder of ACETEL.

“They must see that we have carried out this exercise, and that we have exposed these facilities to the University community and they are ready to be used.

“We must use them because that is part of the verification and assessment that the funder of this project looks up to. That is the reason ACETEL has invited all of us to be a witness.

“There is going to be a report to our funder ‘World Bank’, about what we are doing, to see that the funds that they have given to us were not wasted, and that we have applied them judiciously,” Peters said.

Director of ACETEL, Prof. Grace Jokthan, said the innovation was a testament to what the centre had become.

Jokthan, while commending the Software Developer, Mr Buhari Al-Hassan, said that the registration portal and the data centre met international standards.

She also commended Mr Sule Onuh, Head Software Development Unit, NOUN, for his steadfastness during the course of the assignment.

“We are happy we can deliver the right services to the students and will also ease the burden of work on the staff.

“So it’s cost effective and it’s also efficient.

“For the data centre, we are happy that we are providing an infrastructure that the university can rely on in terms of data analysis, decision making and efficiency in the running of processes in the university.

“So far, 21 staff of the university have been trained as end users, which means that every segment of the university was trained in order to utilise information from the data centre.

“Our staff were also trained to generate information that can be keyed into the data centre; that is the component of utilisation.

“We will continue to create awareness to ensure there is a handshake between all units of the university,” she said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that former VC of NOUN, Prof. Vincent Tenebe, and representatives from the National Universities Commission, were among invited guests that graced the occasion. (NAN)(www.nannews.ng)

Edited by Abiemwense Moru

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