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Attahir Yusuf, the new dean, School of Business & Entrepreneurship, American University of Nigeria (AUN), recently returned to a familiar turf he left close to 12 years ago. Having lectured in many universities across the globe, Yusuf joined the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) where he worked in many capacities. Recently, he left the business community and returned to the academics. He hails from Yola, Adamawa State. Dr. Yusuf received his PhD in Management from the University of Sussex in the UK in 1986. He has an MSc in Management Technology from the University of Wales Institute of Science & Technology (now University of Wales, Cardiff, Business School) in 1984. In this interview with ZEBULON AGOMUO, Editor, he shares his mission at the university. Excerpts:
You were at the NNPC which many people consider as a place to be. Now you are at AUN, what is the attraction?
Well, I am the newest kid on the block. I am the newest Dean of Business and Entrepreneur. I have a substantial experience in academics. I have served in at least seven different universities around the world, then I joined the NNPC. Now, I am at AUN. The basic aim of the School of Business is to produce graduates in business and it is aimed at people who are novices who want to go into business or young kids coming from school. It is also targeted at practising managers as well as practising entrepreneurs. Young people who want to start their work in business environment, people who are already practising in management and business and other organisations as well as entrepreneurs. That is practicsing business people. Having come from that angle, the other angle is that the School of Business in AUN is primarily established to serve students, to serve intellectual development and to serve our society- both locally, nationally and internationally. If you look at the foundation objectives of AUN, it is a Development University. What that means basically is that we don’t just pack people with knowledge and then let them loose. This is because you pack people with knowledge so that they can make significant contributions in the society. From the perspective of the School of Business, we want to produce graduates that can, after their studies, go into their own businesses; in other words, create jobs. That is the fundamental thing and that’s why our name also includes Entrepreneurship. We didn’t just say School of Business Administration; we said School of Business and Entrepreneurship. Fundamentally, our graduates should be in a position to- from the word go, go into the society and create jobs by establishing their own businesses. We give them that particular training. That is very, very important to us. Secondly, our graduates also can go and work for any organisations, public service sector organisations, etc, but the aim of the Development University and the aim of the School of Business is to produce graduates that can go into the society and make significant contributions by providing jobs and services to other people through managing their own businesses. Again, the School of Business as an intellectual entity would also try to develop knowledge, harness knowledge to bring in new ideas into society in terms of managing businesses in particular and managing organisations in general. We are going to do that by teaching our students to look at things from critical perspective, analytical perspective and from the actor’s perspective. Analytical perspective means that they should be in a position to look at things and not just on the face value but no, they have to look at it from a foundation of other influential variables- what other things influenced this thing that I am looking at? For instance, if I am giving you an examination, I am not going to ask you where is Yola located? No. I have to ask you in such a way that will bring the analytical ability in you, so that you will not just give us information about Yola, but information about the location, environment and all the variables that influence Yola. We also develop a mode of teaching that is systematic in methodology. What this basically means is that you look at things as a whole and to know that this has different parts and these parts are inter-dependent and inter-related. So, you don’t just look at things from one perspective and draw conclusion. Finally, our instructional methodology also encourages what I call the actor’s approach. By actor’s perspective, we try to get our students to mimic near reality of anything we are teaching them. If for instance, we are teaching them how to start a new business, we will start in a way that mimics the reality of establishing a real business. How do we do that? We use simulations. We simulate how to do these things; we use case study methods. Another way to do that is to act it. We have a course here, you develop a concept and you go through the process of developing a business from the conceptual level to developing a business plan; which means business is ready to go. The next course is, you take that business plan; we give you investment fund, up to $5,000 or so for you to start and run the business for a semester. After that we look at your agreement, profits or losses; we mentor you, we guide you and we try to solve the problems you encountered to ensure you get substantial experience. So, we don’t only tell you how to start a business, but we let you do your business for four or five months. This is because we want you to have the ability to successfully start your own business when you finish your studies in AUN. Basically, this is what we do with respect to our students. With respect to contribution to knowledge, we have an elaborate research methodology and research focus. And this research comes from works of our students, ourselves and collaboration among them and collaboration between staff and staff. Our research is mainly focused on solving the problems of our immediate society. And because we are a Developing University we are trying to develop our own location. Another way that we operate is to serve the society and to serve the community. This is very, very important in goals of AUN. Every school has a way to serve society. Our school in particular- we mentor the local business people, we organise seminars for them on how to run their businesses more effectively, train them on the basic fundamentals about business, we encourage and bring school children to the campus for a number of days to train them on thinking about starting their own business, to generate their interest to be business people, business moguls in the future so that they can create wealth and jobs for the society.
There is a world of difference between classroom teaching and learning, and real practice. Sometimes there are certain challenges that make it difficult to put into practice the good knowledge that has been acquired; how do we break this dichotomy?
As I said we don’t only do classroom work, we do practical work. Practical work means that the students while on campus establish a business and run it. We give the students seed money to run their business once they develop a business plan. They are doing well in it. But you have to understand something, it is a common knowledge too that for every one successful business that you see, may be 90 or more had started and failed. But we learn from our mistakes. There are many people who will tell you that they started one business today, they did another one the next day and in that order- they tried about 10, 15, 20 and at the 21st one they succeeded. Business and failure go together, but we don’t want to mention failure in the negative sense but as a learning curve. We have to learn from failure. Every businessman must ask that question in order to achieve lasting success. Again, we have to remember that if we want to go into business, we have control over 50, 60 or 70 percent of what happens, the other 30 percent is not within our control. It is environmental. That’s why I told you earlier that we look at things from the system perspective. So, in planning your business, you must look at other influential variables that will likely influence your business, and take precautions. If you do all of that you’ll find out that the risks associated with failure in business will be minimised, it will not all be eliminated.
Your approach to teaching of Business is quite different from what happens in many other universities in the country; in what way can AUN influence other institutions in order to help the country achieve the development that it desires? Again, if for instance the universities in the country produce 1000 graduates of Business and say 20 comes from AUN, what impact would 20 graduates make in a country that is in dare need of wealth creation?
Number one, AUN is not claiming monopoly of producing good graduates, but we have our own part to contribute. AUN from the foundation is a Development University, that in itself has given us competitive advantage over our competitors even though we are in academic environment. Most universities if you look at it, they train you, they impart knowledge in you but at the end of the day you go out there and find it difficult to adjust to the reality of life or to execute what has been imparted in you, but in our own case we give you the knowledge and also the knowledge of how to execute it when you get there. That gives us a competitive advantage, and how do we do that? We bring people from all over the world who have been identified with this expertise. We bring people from different spheres of life. I came straight from the industry. I had been in the academics for over 23 years before I joined the industry and I spent over ten to eleven years in the industry and I am back in the academics. So, I have the academic knowledge and I have the industry knowledge. I think am in a better position to develop a business graduate; that is our philosophy. We bring people not just with academic experience but with industry experience.
After graduation from AUN, for those student going into private business without going into paid employment, is there a way the university monitors their progress, at least for the first few years after leaving the school?
We have an alumni entity which is designed to enable us to be in contact with our graduates, not just for a few years, but forever. It also gives them the opportunity to interact among themselves. In fact, about this starting of business we are talking about, we have many of them who are running their businesses. Many of them even consult for AUN. Some of them have developed software that AUN is currently using.
As someone coming in with wealth of experience, are you satisfied with the programmes in the School of Business and Entrepreneurship or do you intend to review them?
You know in the academics and in any organisation for that matter, we continue to develop everyday because new things come up. New ideas come up; new needs come up; new realities emerge and you have to conform and plan to confront such developments. Of course, we are going to do that. We look at the needs of the society; we also look at the type of people we have and we get the two together to see how these can be synchronised. And this leads to programme development. One of the things we want to do in the future is to increase our impact in the community. If you go around Yola you will see that the community is already associated with the activities of AUN; you see a lot of entities emerging, a lot of opportunities being created, people coming in; the economy is buoyant to the extent that you see it today is because of the presence of AUN. From that community impact we are looking at developing women entrepreneurship in the vicinity. We have started a programme to do that. We are also looking at developing talent-capturing, talent-nurturing, and others. A lot is on the card. There are lots of people around here. You see a kid fixing telephones, radios. These are talents hidden; we want to explore and bring them out. And we also want to introduce new courses in the future that will help to augment certain deficiencies that we have observed. For instance, for me personally, we are looking towards how to improve the public service sector as well by introducing programmes that will aid that. In the School of Business we are going to establish a Centre for Leadership and Executive Development to promote leadership in the African context but of course starting from Nigeria. This leadership is geared towards already established managers who want to develop themselves in the field that they are practising- mostly management, organisational orientation, entrepreneurship orientation, etc. Again, as our students’ number continues to increase we shall continue to introduce new specialisations in line with the AUN vision.
The standard of education in the country has continued to fall. You were in the system for 23 years both in the country and overseas countries; what do you think we are doing wrongly?
It is not only Nigeria. If you look at the literatures, the news and so forth you find that the standards had been going down quite a lot. Why that is the case, well there are quite a lot of factors and most of the factors are societal. First of all, we have seen a significant number of increase in studentship. In my day, we were only 15 or 20 in my class because that was the number of students in that particular course. But today, I was listening to news the other day; they were saying that 1.75 million candidates were going to sit for JAMB. So, there’s a significant increase in the number of students coming in that we have to serve. But unfortunately, along the way we did not plan to reflect that increase that was going to come in the future and as a result of that we find out that we are under severe pressure- pressure on the teachers who teach the kids; pressure on the facilities and pressure on so many other things. These have substantially lowered the standard of education; but like I said, it is not only in Nigeria; if you go to so many other countries, it is the same thing.
How then would the problem be solved or has it got no solution?
Well, it is to first identify how the problem emerged; then address them by planning. It is not only planning, we have to change our orientation, and we must also develop the will to make the difference that we need.
You left the classroom for many years, how do you feel coming back and what has changed?
When I came back to the academics, one of my friends said to me ‘don’t worry, it’s just like riding a bicycle’. What that means is that if you don’t ride a bicycle for 15 years you will still not forget how to ride it when next you climb on it. You may wobble for a short time before you rediscover yourself; so it is the same thing with academics. I was telling people yesterday (Saturday, May 13, 2017), look I have not worn this academic gown for nearly 12 years, but I feel I have been wearing it every day. So, it is the same thing.
