My Nigeria…

PRESIDENT Umaru Yar’Adua has charged the authorities of the University of Ibadan to work harder so that the institution could be ranked among the first twenty universities in Africa. The president who was a visitor to the university as part of activities marking the end of the institution’s 60th Founders day anniversary which kicked-off last week Monday.
He told the institution not to relish in the victory of the past but should shed the current status of ‘local champion’ and compare favourably with its counterparts in the world.

President Yar’Adua who was represented by the Minister of State for Education, Hajia Aishatu Dukku Jubril said “it is however disheartening to note that the premier university is not ranked among the first 20 universities in Africa and there is no doubt that a lot still needs to be done in this regard.”

Although it is still the best in Nigeria based on the recent ranking carried out by the National Universities Commission, it is better for it to “shake off the toga of local champion and put on the garb of continental or better still global champion. This demands hard work, determination and discipline”.

To reach an enviable height among other highly rated universities in the world, he advised that “universities should be more proactive by, for example, offering consultancy services to government and the private sector without compromising their core functions of teaching and research. As a matter of fact, such activities will invariably make lecturers better teachers as they see the application of their theoretical constructs”.

The Vice Chancellor of the institution, Prof. Olufemi Bamiro noted that as the university prepared to become a postgraduate institution, there is need to improve on the library facilities.

According to him, there should be massive acquisition of new books to complement existing collections, expansion of sitting space in the postgraduate sections of the library from 240 to 400 so as to accommodate post graduate students and subscription to current journals in all programmes of the university. The journal holding of the library now stands at over 1,500 titles”.

He hinted that with the reality that the government alone could not fund quality higher education, the institution had used its own initiative to explore other sources of funding which included the University of Ibadan Endowment Fund .

The institution, he noted, could now boast of an investment worth over N1.5billion.
The Chancellor of the University, Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero decried the alarming rate at which undergraduates across the country engage in cultism, examination malpractices, armed robbery, and gross indiscipline.