From Noah Ocheni, Lokoja
The Vice Chancellor of the Federal University Lokoja, Prof Olayemi Akinwumi, has said the institution is committed to the highest standard of education as the university would soon rank among the best 10 in sub-Sahara Africa.
“Today we are graduating 14 first class, 188 Second Class upper, 441 Second Class lower and 95 Third class respectively.”
The VC made this disclosure over the weekend in Lokoja, during the fifth convocation ceremony for the award of Bachelor degrees to students and honourary degrees to eminent personalities in the country
at the Felele – Lokoja permanent site of the institution.
Prof Akinwumi said there were lots of physical transformations and academic improvements recorded within his less than nine months in office which he said is already having a positive impact on the staff and students
The vice chancellor said his vision will be hampered if there is paucity of funds and lack of adequate manpower, as he made an appeal to President Muhammadu Buhari to lift the embargo on employment at learning institutions across the country.
Prof Akinwumi stated that the university was in dire need of manpower following the expansion of the institution to its permanent site and the creation of additional new courses, which have made the current numbers of teaching and non teaching staff grossly inadequate.
The VC urged President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, to salvage our plight and lift the embargo on employment so that the university can aggressively recruit its manpower needs.
He noted that academic staff of the university are being considered for the award of Foreign Study Fellowships to pursue Master and PhD programmes in their respective fields through TETFund intervention.
Prof. Akinwumi said some academic staff are also being considered for the award of Local Study Fellowships to pursue their PhD Programmes and Master Degrees through TETFund.
He stated that the university’s management was striving to increase and improve on the existing facilities and to equally lay emphasis on staff training and development so that the institution would be able to cope with the increasing number of students.
‘As a result of the recent embargo on conference sponsorship by TETFund, we have not been able to sponsor anyone to attend any conference since my assumption of duty in February, 202L
“The university library is the hub of research in the university. The library was in a state of decadence with low book collections at the time I assumed office in February 2021. The situation of the university library was so precarious that management declared a state of emergency.” He said.
“I am happy to announce that management has taken drastic measure to restore the utility value of the library. We have commenced the process of re-stocking collections and book titles in conjunction with the end-users.”
“We are determined to equip the library of the university with up-to-date resource materials to enable it to perform its resource repository role in the community of scholars.”
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