The Vision of the Faculty

    The vision of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences is first to produce graduate officers with broad academic training in Arts and Social Science disciplines who can use their competencies as strong foundations for their careers as officers in the Nigerian Armed Forces.  This is in the context of a globalized world within which officers of the Nigerian Military should be intellectually well equipped.  Secondly, the Faculty seeks to train military and civilian graduates to acquire higher degrees which will equip them with special expertise relevant to military professionalism or enterprise in other public or private sector as the case may be.

The Mission of the Faculty

    The Faculty is in the first place to produce high quality graduate officers for the Nigerian Armed Forces who can apply the knowledge and skills acquired in their various disciplines to meet the complex challenges of the Nigerian Armed Forces in the rapidly changing world of the profession of arms.  Thus suitably equipped, the civilian higher
degree holders can fill important positions in the universities,  Government, Business, and Industry.

Functions

   Academic staff around the world discharge three main functions:  teaching, research, and community service.  In very few words, some idea of what the Faculty has been doing in these areas of responsibility for over 30 years will now be given. Coming to teaching, we can say with pride that this Faculty has produced far more graduate officers for the Nigerian Armed Forces than any of the other Faculties.  In some years, we had more cadets in the Faculty than in the other Faculties put together.  Until a year or so ago, every year, the Faculty attracted more fresh cadets than any other and every year more cadets from here receive NDA degrees than any other.

     NDA is the most difficult university to teach and study in because of the two training programmes our cadets pursue simultaneously.  They do four years of academic training to earn their degrees and an additional year of military training.  Along with the degree, this qualifies the cadet for commission if he survives the rigours.

    At the undergraduate level, teaching in the Faculty centres exclusively on the cadets.  The Faculty prepares Arts cadets for B.A. Honours degrees in Arabic, French, and History.  Social Science cadets are prepared for B.Sc. Honours degrees in Accounting, Economics, Geography, Political Science and Defence Studies, and Psychology.  With lecturers of all categories totaling 81, staffing in the Faculty is not yet adequate for the number of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes which the various Departments mount every session.

  Since 2012/2013 academic year, the teaching process has undergone some transformation following the introduction of the multi-media method.  Cadets now register their courses online, and many of their academic activities are also carried out online.  At the postgraduate level, a wide variety of programmes, both full-time and part-time (including Masters and PhDs), is available and open to military, para-military, and civilian students alike.  The programmes are meant to prepare the civilian students for career positions in the universities, government, industry, and so on.  These programmes contribute towards capacity-building in the country.  The higher degree programmes are meant to sharpen and broaden the intellect of the force personnel and expose them to some general and special academic issues related to the profession of arms.  They thus acquire helpful expertise within the boundaries of military science.

In the area of Research, it can be said with all modesty that considerable activities go on in FASS.  Here, as in the universities around the world, lecturers must publish or perish.  Through their hard work, nobody has perished.  There have also been collaborative efforts at Faculty level which resulted in the following four full- scale books:

(i)    AA Aderinto and CN Ubah (eds.), Nigeria and the Contemporary World, Kaduna:  Baraka Press and Publishers Ltd, 1998.

(ii)    SA Sati and AA Lipede (ed.), Transition and Development Process in Nigeria,  Kaduna:  Maharaim Publications, 2000.

(iii)   AM Yakubu, RT Adegboye, CN Ubah, and B Dogo (eds.), Crisis and Conflict Management in Nigeria since 1980, Vols One and Two, Kaduna:  Baraka Press and Publishers Ltd, 2005.
          
(iv)    Chinedu N Ubah, Bala Dogo, and DO Alabi (eds.), Studies on Kaduna State, Kaduna:  Pyla-Mak Services Ltd, 2008.

(v)    OE Tangban and CC Osakwe (eds), Prospectives in African Historical Studies: Essays in Honour of Prof Chinedu Ubah,  Kaduna: Plya-Mak Services Ltd, 2013.
        
    Individual members of the Faculty have over the years published books and journal articles in their areas of specialization.    The Faculty has a journal, Arts and Social Science Research, first published in 1998.  It is now also publishing the Journal of Defence Studies.  (JDS).  Information about JDS is available at the website.

For more than one year now, some Faculty members have benefited from the present Commandant’s sponsorship of international conferences.  There was nothing like that before now.  The door is still open.  Many more members of the Faculty are working hard to be on the list of beneficiaries.

As regards Community Service, the staff in the Faculty are involved in a wide range of activities.  Some examples will suffice.

    (a)    Over the years, FASS has been an important recruiting ground by the     Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Jaji and the Infantry Corps Centre     Jaji, for resource personnel.  It is well known that PSDS is running a MIADS     programme at Jaji.  For this purpose, some staff of the Department travel to Jaji for     lectures each working day of the week throughout the duration of each course in the Senior Division.

    (b)    The National Universities Commission has used a good number of  Faculty staff for accreditation visits to other universities

    (c)    Prof CN Ubah of the Department of History and International Studies served  as a member of the Governing Council of the University of Nigeria in 1999.  He     also served as a member of the Presidential Visitation Panel to Michael Okpara University, Umudike, between February and March, 2011.  

    (d)    Gombe State Government appointed Prof RA Alkali of PSDS as State  Commissioner.  Prof Alkali subsequently served the People’s Democratic Party as its National Publicity Secretary.

    (e)    In 2002, Prof OE Tangban of the Department of History and International Studies served as a member of National Committee on ‘Calabar History’ tasked with the responsibility of sourcing historical evidence to validate Nigeria’s claim to the Bakassi Peninsular during the country’s dispute with Cameroun over the oil rich territory.

    (f)    Between 2004 and 206 Prof AO Ahmed of the Department of History and International Studies served as a member of Presidential Research Committee, and in 2009 he was appointed member of the Presidential Police Reform Committee.

    (g)    Between 2007 and 2012 Prof AM Yakubu, also of Department of History and     International Studies was appointed Executive Secretary, TETFUND.

    (h)    In 2011, the Hon Minister of Environment appointed     Dr Al-    Amin of     Geography Department as his Special Adviser.  Dr Al-Amin returned to the     Department at the end of the year, 2012.

    (i)    Three Faculty staff (names withheld) have at several times  been involved at     the National Defence College as External Assessors for the students’ projects.
    (j)    Associate Prof S Ochoche served as the Chief of Political Affairs, United     Nations Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS) in 2013.


Faculty Doctrines

    The Faculty has six doctrines in number.  They were formulated and adopted by the Faculty Board in April 2011 in line with the principles of the tenure of  Major General Emeka Onwuamaegbu as the Commandant of the Academy.  They are as follows:

•    Academic Excellence
•    Time Consciousness
•    Commitment to Duty
•    Respect for Hours of Work
•    Appropriate and Decent Dressing
•    Cleanliness of the Environment

These ideas were not altogether new, but for the first time we articulated and adopted them as doctrines to guide individual and collective behavior in the Faculty.  Collectively, the Faculty has reached a very respectable level of compliance with each doctrine, but there are still rooms for improvement.