•Says: He applied for the post, passed assessments
•He gave Isa Ali Ibrahim as his name
•ASUU begins probe

AUTHORITIES of the Federal University of Technology, (FUTO), Owerri, have explained why the university made the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ali Pantami, a professor, saying the name he gave to the university was Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim before his appointment.

FUTO also insisted that the appointment of the minister to the position of professor “followed required due process.”

Pantami was recently elevated to the academic rank of a professor by FUTO along with some other lecturers of the university.

The minister’s elevation has generated controversy, with many faulting FUTO on the promotion of the minister, who has never been on the teaching roll of the university and whose highest academic attainment was just a lecturer before he ventured into politics.

Speaking with Saturday Tribune on the issue, the Registrar of FUTO, Mr John Nnabuihe, said: “The university knows him as Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim based on the documents in his file submitted,” adding that he was assessed alongside other internal members who were alsoappointed as professors. Nnabuihe defended the promotion as deserving, saying it was “based on his qualification which he merited through long years of research works.”

Nnabuihe said Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim was not “promoted” as reported in some quarters but was “appointed” because he was a Reader.

The FUTO Registrar said “the only reason why it looks like it is a promotion is because he was a Reader and has not attained such position before. So, he is appointed into a higher position than where he was before.”

He said: “Somebody who is not your staff, you cannot promote him.” Nnabuihe said that after Dr Ibrahim graduated in Computer Science, he started as a lecturer at the Abubakar Tafawa Belewa University. Dr Ibrahim, according to him, later went to another university in Saudi Arabia and was thereafter appointed as an “Associate Professor,” which was where he stayed for some time until he was appointed as the Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) which he said was “like a research institute.”

According to him, in such a research institute, somebody could be there and at the same time would be publishing papers that could make him qualify. He said based on that, a particular university “could decide to appoint someone as a professor.”

The FUTO Registrar told Saturday Tribune that in September 2020, FUTO advertised for the position of professor and lecturers in different disciplines in the institution and Dr Ibrahim applied.

He said: “If an associate professor is in a particular university and another university wants him and after assessing him he is qualified based on his research works and credentials, such a person could be appointed as professor by that university.”

On when Dr Ibrahim would be available to take up his new job in the university, the Registrar said that “is his business,” saying “he applied and FUTO has assessed and appointed him, it’s not my business” (when he would take up the position). On whether FUTO has cyber security as a course, the Registrar said the institution has a Department of Cybersecurity under its School of Information and Communications Technology.

ASUU orders probe

Meanwhile, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has launched an investigation into the appointment and has directed its FUTO chapter to look into the circumstances under which Pantami was promoted to the highest academic rank in the institution.

Reacting to the development, the chairman of ASUU, FUTO branch, Mr Christopher Echereobia, told Saturday Tribune that the union was aware of the development, adding that the union was already investigating the issue.

Echereobia said the national secretariat of ASUU had directed that “the issue should be investigated to ascertain the true position of the matter.”

He explained that the union held its zonal meeting on Wednesday and the issue was discussed.

The FUTO ASUU chairman said investigation was ongoing and as soon as the inquiry was concluded, the union would come out with its position. He said ASUU members in the institution had been given two weeks to investigate the matter and come up with their findings.

Echereobia said: “I just came back from Awka. We have been meeting and we want to get to the root of the matter.”

The ASUU chief said already, the union had contacted ASUU at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa Univeristy (ATBU) because they learnt that Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim was a one-time staff member there before he went for a PhD and later went to Medina.

He added that the union was also trying to reach the Saudi institution to ascertain the true position, whether he was “associate professor” there or not.

Nigerian Tribune

lalasticlala mynd44

The academia in Nigeria under the sway of corruption. Such a shame

Very shameful. Ass licking by a federal university. Because of money!

BTW, why didn't he apply to Gombe state university or Bayero university, kano?

MONEY
It doesn't pass that
See why many students don't respect yall if yall with experience and sense can do this and u expect them to thread the righteous life with ur rubbish advise

Congratulations Prof. Pantami, may God continue to bless you as you move Nigeria forward

He is on a mission! You can take that to the bank! He will fail though, In Jesus Name!! If Islam and its adherents won’t live and let live The Most High God will incapacitate them in Jesus Name!!! Best to live and let live rather than planning evil schemes to subjugate others with a view to Islamising them. Islam is an either or proposition. Islam takes no prisoners. Unlike Christianity it does not give room for other belief systems. It does not tolerate an adherent choosing to no longer be a Muslim- death is pronounced! It is not designed to coexist with other belief systems. Unfortunately the West is too far gone in its disregard for God it can’t see the unfolding scenario put in place by Islam. I sincerely pray and hope it won’t be too late for the Western society. Belgium might become Belgistan in the fashion of Afghanistan et al.

As far as explanation don enter then it is actually shameful


Why we made

If it was merited you won't be making cos it would be deserved

There are basically three legitimate ways to become a professor: by climbing the professional ladder in a university; by being appointed to the position from outside academia in recognition of vast and varied industry experience or artistic wizardly in a field; and through a courtesy appointment. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami’s record does not qualify him for any.
Let’s start with the first. Pantami’s undergraduate degree in computer science from the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU), Bauchi, was earned in 2003. That’s less than 20 years ago. When he started his academic career as a Graduate Assistant at ATBU in 2004, the computer science department that awarded him his bachelor’s degree rejected him because his degree was “weak”; he was instead employed in the Information Technology section of the Faculty of Management where he also got his master’s degree in 2010/2011 and got promoted to Assistant Lecturer.
In 2011, he got the Petroleum Trust Fund Development (PTDF) scholarship to study for a PhD at the Department of Management in the Aberdeen Business School of Robert Gordon University, which he earned in August 2014.
Upon his return to ATBU, he was promoted to Lecturer 1—skipping one rank. He requested to be promoted to Senior Lecturer but was denied because he had insufficient publication record to justify his request. He resigned in protest and took up an appointment at the Salafist, male-Muslim-only Islamic University of Madinah as an Assistant Professor of Information Science.
In 2016, he accepted a government appointment as DG of NITDA and has never returned to academia since then.
Now, three criteria are used to promote academics: teaching, research, and service. Pantami’s entire university teaching record is less than 10 years—if you consider that he never taught either at ATBU or at Robert Gordon University (although he lied that he did during his senate confirmation hearing) during his three years of doctoral studies.
His research output is even more underwhelming. Although he brags about having “over 160 publications,” his actual scholarly output is really thin for someone who wants to be a professor. When I checked SCOPUS, the well-regarded database of top-level, peer-reviewed academic journals, using his legal name, that is, Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami is the name of his neighborhood in Gombe town, which he doesn’t legally bear), only three articles and one citation came up.
Of the three articles, he is the single author of one (which is actually only a 2-page country report) and a distant co-author in two. All three articles were published between 2018 and 2019 while he’s in government.
But SCOPUS can be unjustifiably exclusionary, so I looked him up on Google Scholar, a more expansive and laissez faire database of scholarly articles and books. He has exactly 10 articles and 39 citations there. Of the 10 articles, he is the first or sole author of 5 and a “tag-me-along” co-author of 5.
Sadly, at least 5 of his 10 articles are in dubious, pay-to-play, predatory journals that would destroy the academic career of any scholar in a serious country. Most of the articles were accepted and published in the same month that they were submitted! Since peer review typically takes months, the articles were clearly not peer-reviewed.
Evidence of a lack of peer review is evident in the fact that several of the articles are riddled with avoidable proofreading and grammatical errors. Plus, many of them, such as one that was basically an unimaginative 7-page rehash of publicly available facts about NAFDAC, are flat-out scholarly scams that a serious undergraduate won’t even be caught committing.
He published only two scholarly articles—in 2013 (from his PhD thesis) and in 2015—before he came to government, which explains why ATBU refused to promote him to senior lectureship. By 2014 when he wanted to be a Senior Lecturer, he had only one notable publication.
There is no serious university in the world that can legitimately promote a former Lecturer I (at ATBU) or an Assistant Professor (at the Islamic University of Madinah) overnight to the position of professor with only 10 substandard publications in predatory journals and 39 citations. The minimum number of publications required to be promoted to professorship in most Nigerian universities is 15. A professor should ideally have at least 100 citations.
Plus, Pantami didn’t spend up to a year as Lecturer I. Nigerian academics are required to spend at least 3 years in a rank. Three years as a Lecturer I, 3 years as a Senior Lecturer, and 3 years as a Reader would give you 9 years. That means he needs to spend at least 9 years in the university after his ministerial appointment— and publish a few more articles— to be qualified for promotion to professor. In Saudi Arabia, it would require at least 8 more years.
(Of course, if he was actually employed by FUTO that “promoted” him, his unmerited professorship wouldn’t have attracted any notice since there are several such examples of perversions of traditions all over Nigerian universities. It’s the absurdity of being promoted to a professor at and by a university he was never affiliated with while he’s a serving minister that made the fraud stick out like a sore thumb.)
Also note that Pantami’s PhD is in management, a social science discipline, not in computer science or cybersecurity. So, it’s doubly fraudulent that he has been “promoted” to the professorship of a discipline he didn’t study or publish in extensively.
His doctoral dissertation, titled “A theoretical and empirical investigation of the barriers to the adoption of state-of-the-art information systems by Nigerian indigenous oil companies,” which is freely available on the Internet, is basically a survey of employees of Nigerian oil companies on their perceptions of IT policies in their places of employment. It’s a social scientific study that any political science, sociology, or economics graduate can conduct.
Now that I have established that he can’t legitimately be a professor anywhere in the world on the basis of his scholarship and pedagogy, can he be appointed a professor on the strength of his industry experience? No! The only other job Pantami has ever done outside of government and his less than 10 years of university teaching is being the Imam of ATBU. He has never invented any cybersecurity patent and has never worked in a cybersecurity company.
The only discipline that can validly appoint him as a professor of practice is Islamic Studies. Say what you may about him, he is one of northern Nigeria’s most prodigious and consequential Islamic exegetes. His oeuvre in Islamic exegesis is unquestionably worthy of a professorial appointment in Islamic jurisprudence. That’s the path of least resistance he should have taken since he desperately desires to be addressed as a professor.
In defense of Pantami’s professorial fraud, one Professor Tukur Sa’ad hashed over a litany of people who became professors without terminal degrees and without prior teaching experience, as if I didn’t already make that point and called it an example of what we call a “professor of practice” in American academe.
In my December 20, 2015 column titled “A Comparison of Everyday University Vocabularies in Nigeria, America, and Britain (II),” I gave an even more dramatic example than Sa’ad’s in the late Maya Angelou who was a lifetime endowed professor of American literature at Wake Forest University but who didn’t have a bachelor’s degree.
Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, JP Clark, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and a host of other literary icons didn’t have—and didn’t need to have—a PhD to become professors. Apart from the fact that they didn’t climb the professorial mountain from the top (they started from lectureship), their path-breaking and prodigiously creative outputs are equivalent to—and in some cases exceed—a PhD.
In North American universities, it's called "Research and Creative Activity" for a reason. Wole Soyinka, Achebe, JP Clark, etc. had vast and varied oeuvres in "creative activity" before they became professors. Plus, during their time, the possession of a PhD was not a requirement to move through the academic hierarchy.
Pantami does not come even remotely close to their record in the field FUTO awarded him a fraudulent professorship. In any case, Soyinka, Achebe, etc. taught at the universities where they were professors. Pantami is a serving minister.
How about a courtesy professorship? Pantami isn’t qualified for that, either. A courtesy professorship is a professorial appointment given to distinguished professors at other universities who need not be at the universities that appointed them.
It’s called an “honorary professor” in some UK universities, an “extraordinary professor” in South African universities, and a “professor-at-large” in others. It’s basically an honor given to people who’re already professors elsewhere, so you can’t become a courtesy professor at another university if you are not already one somewhere else.
Some people said Pantami’s “achievements” as a minister are worthy of a professorial appointment. Haha! OK, so people who imagine themselves to be successful in whatever they do should now apply to FUTO for a Pantamized fraudfessorship to aggrandize their insecure egos?
Look, I’m calling out Pantami’s professorial fraud not in spite of my being a Muslim and his friend but because I’m a Muslim and his friend. My father, who was a Hafiz like him, would disown me if I ignored or gave comfort to fraud.


farooqkperogi

https://web.facebook.com/farooqkperogi

Anyone who thinks Nigeria can break in the next 100 years is just deceiving himself. Because most times the person who shows you love is someone from another tribe than your own tribe.
Yoruba and Igbo people in FUTO gave professorship to Fulani man. Professor Kperogi who is same tribe with Patami is strongly against it.


In my personal opinion, Patami should have been given the Professorship by the university he was teaching before becoming a Minister not a place he has never taught

Imo state and their iberiberism i wonder how that state take enter southeast map

Fantastically corrupt Nation...Judiciary, Academic, Public Service, Private Sector, Religious bodies shame on y’all.

Someone definitely fell for Isa Pantami’s swagger knowing that he/she/they will benefit from his political influence.

They should be fished out and demoted.

Money and Power is the reason. Meanwhile those on lower packages on dstv can upgrade to compact cheapily on dstv and enjoy premier league matches at home.Check my last topic.

Hisses

Goid

What a shame.,

He gave Ali .....as his name meaning if you had known his real name you wouldn't have given him the professorship...

This implies that he wasn't qualified for it but something happened and he was given a professor...

Who knows what it is .......
Just thinking aloud

FUTO una fall my hands

we do not care. reallly!!!!!!!!

He no fit go colet Prof for Sokoto or Borno..

Well enjoy your Professor.....


Professor in Terrorism...


always resist the urge to shalaye...

In my Opinion.............. he doesnt deserve it

So his state or region couldn't make him a professor, na FUTO? If the school says he deserves it who are we to counter their claims. Enjoy your professorship, Prof. Isa.

If it was ok, there would not be any reason to explain

A man that couldn't secure his Facebook account?

Hope Sabodinjo just wanted to a**lick

It's ok

It changes nothing

A terrorist is a terrorist

Professor of Terrorist Organizations... IMO state never see anything more destruction to that state henceforth

Lame excuses...

Ok

The VC of FUTO has compromised.
He has embezzled the institutions money and wants a soft landing.
Hence he poached Pantami with professorship.

Shameless institution

Terroristessor and his fraud institution.

Ammishaddai:
The academia in Nigeria under the sway of corruption. Such a shame

If it's under the sway of corruption according to you, you will not read that the decision by the university senate is being scrutinised to see if questions are to be answered.

Why don't we just wait for the outcome and avoid making a negative and sweeping statement. It won't kill us nau

Excuses after money exchange hands

Make He no bring his NIN disturb futoites and it's Alumni doing things with the school