A leading Mass Communications scholar, Prof Umar Pate, has made it to Vice-Chancellorship of the Federal University, Kashere in Gombe State. He was, until his election as VC, the Dean of the Postgraduate School Bayero University, Kano, (BUK) where he had been the pioneer Dean of the Faculty of Mass Communications.
The traditional title holder of the Adamawa Emirate had started his academic career at the University of Maiduguri where he was for many years before moving to BUK in 2011.
Currently the president of the Association of Communication Scholars and Practitioners of Nigeria, the new VC is one of the brains behind the unbundling of the discipline of Mass Communications in Nigeria on the assumption that the move will enhance the quality of training. He will also be counted as a pioneer of Conflict Reporting specialisation which straddles Mass Communications and Conflict Studies. He has also been tightly involved in the idea of community radio in Nigeria as the guarantor or democratic balancer. Lastly, he has been involved in civil society politics. The totality is that he will not be an autocratic VC but an enlightened one.
Prof Pate’s election as the VC of the university will certainly draw attention to the place in terms of the calibre of scholarship and the very idea of the university that would obtain there hence. This is more so that he has been a product of one of the best established universities in Nigeria – the University of Maiduguri as designed by Prof Jubril Aminu. Although regarded rightly or wrongly as arrogant, Prof Aminu brought quality to assignments he handled and it is the disappearance of people of their generation across Nigeria today that has totally disenabled the system.
This background means that the Federal University, Kashere will be under observation.
The Federal University, Kashere in Gombe in the Northeast of Nigeria is one of the nine or so such universities established by the Goodluck Jonathan administration in 2011, the others being Otuoke in Bayelsa State; Ndufe-Alike in Ebonyi State; Oye-Ekiti in Ekiti State; Dutse in Jigawa State; Dutsin-ma in Katsina State; Lokoja in Kogi State; Lafia in Nasarawa State and Wukari in Taraba State.
