Professor Na’Allah Emerged UniAbuja Vice Chancellor

Professor Na’Allah Emerged UniAbuja Vice Chancellor
Professor Abdulrasheed Na’Allah has been appointed the Vice Chancellor of the University Abuja (UNIABUJA) in the Federal Capital Territory.

The Chairman of the Governing Council of the University, Alhaji Sani Maikudi confirmed the development on Friday while presenting a letter of appointment to Professor Na’Allah, the outgoing Vice Chancellor, Kwara State University (KWASU) where his tenure ends in July 2019.

PRNigeria gathered that Na’Allah was appointed the VC by the Governing Council after a keenly contested screening exercise which included interviews of professors from various higher institutions of learning.

Born in 1962, the scholar obtained a BA in English from the University of Ilorin in 1988, with a thesis “Dadakuada: the trends in the development of Ilorin traditional oral poetry,” and received M.A. Literature in English from the same university and in 1992.

In 1999, he received his PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, and was subsequently professor and chair of African Studies at Western Illinois University before he became the Vice Chancellor of Kwara State University in Nigeria.

He is the author and co-author of numerous books, but some books of his that are most recent are Globalization, Oral Performance, and African Traditional Poetry (Palgrave Macmillan, March 2018), African Discourse in Islam, Oral Traditions, and Performance (Routledge, 2010) and Africanity, Islamicity, and Performativity: Identity in the House of Ilorin (Bayreuth African Studies, 2009), and edited a poetry book, Obama-Mentum: An Anthology of Transformational Poetry.

Professor Na’Allah has been nominated for and received numerous awards, including the Gold Key Recognition Award, University of Alberta Student Union, 1998; the Graduate Student Service Award, GSA, University of Alberta; The Alberta Heritage Charles S Noble Award for Student Leadership, 1998, the Province of Alberta, Canada; and the Black Achievements Award, Post-Secondary—Scholastic, 1998, the Black Achievement Awards Society of Alberta.

Professor Na’Allah is the author and co-author of numerous books, including: coauthor with Ladan Sulaiman and Ahmad Sambo, Functional Literacy Primer in Hausa, sponsored by the European Economic Commission and Federal Government of Nigeria, 1992; coauthor, Instructors’ Guide to Functional Literacy Primer in Hausa, 1992; coauthor with Bayo Ogunjimi, Introduction to African Oral Literature (Oral Prose), University of Ilorin Press, 1991; author, Introduction to African Oral Literature (1994); and Editor, Ogoni’s Agonies: Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Crisis in Nigeria (Africa World Press, 1998).

He wrote the article on Kwame Anthony Appiah for The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought.

By PRNigeria