By Felix Khanoba
President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday assured Nigerians of his administration’s commitment to boost access to university education in the country.
Buhari gave the assurance at the 12th convocation ceremony of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) in Abuja.
He said improving support for Open and Distance Learning mode, was one of the mechanisms adopted by his government to ensure more Nigerians get access to higher education that makes provision for life long learning.
Represented by the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, NUC, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, Buhari, who is NOUN’s visitor, assured of his continued support for the university.
“My administration will continue to support the operations of NOUN by giving priority to the provisions of critical human and material infrastructure through increased annual budgetary allocations and constant interventions from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund).
“In our efforts at increasing access to higher education for the masses and Nigerian youths, my administration has in recent years established a number of new tertiary institutions, colleges of education, polytechnics and universities in areas of the country where none existed. In addition to states owned institutions, we have given all kinds of supports to private sector investment in education and happily the results have been quite encouraging.
“Today, Nigeria has a total of 222 universities, comprising 50 federal, 51 states and 111 privates. I have no doubt that with this quantitative increase in the number of tertiary institutions the challenge of access to higher education in Nigeria will be drastically reduced.
“I’m pleased to say that the National Open University of Nigeria has been a major player in our drive to expand access to higher education in the country as well as making it affordable,” the President said.
Earlier, Vice Chancellor of NOUN, Professor Olufemi Peters, said the university was graduating 28,740 students; comprising 21,339 undergraduates and 7,401 post graduates in the convocation.
The visibly elated Vice Chancellor, who commended the President and other stakeholders for their massive support for NOUN, said the university has rolled out new academic programmes.
“In our bid to ensure a sustained and steady growth of the University, we received the blessing of the National Universities Commission to offer the following postgraduate programmes.
” 1. PGD Legislative Drafting 2. Masters in Law 3. PhD in Law, 4 Commonwealth Executive Master of Public Administration (CEMPA) and 5. Commonwealth Executive Master of Business Administration (CEMBA).
” The University will commence the offering of these programmes this year,” Prof Peters said.
The NOUN’s Vice Chancellor, who also brought to the fore recent achievements of the university ranging from infrastructure development, partnerships/linkages, among others, said six graduating students secured First Class.
“Six students made First-Class degree; 2,306 students had Second Class Upper Division; 11,075 had Second Class Lower Division.
“5,558 had Third Class Degree, we also recorded 279 students’ Passes. We are graduating a total of 2,057 students in the Bachelor of Nursing Science Programme.
“85 of these are graduating with distinction; 1,231 are graduating with credit; while 75 are graduating with Pass degrees in the new classification system,” he said
In the area of research, Professor Peters said the institution has re-established the Directorate for Research Administration which gets an annual budget of N150m as reserarch grant for faculty members, adding that “over the last two years, a total of 42 research projects have been sponsored through our institutional research grants.”
On his part, Chairman of the governing council and Pro-chancellor of the university, Professor Peter Okebukola, expressed satisfaction with the progess and achievements being recorded in NOUN.
Okebukola, who scored the Vice Chancellor high in the running of the university’s affairs, said the council was impressed with the improved students enrolment and the high number of graduates being churned out by the institution, saying they have continued to contribute in big way to the Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
While congratulating the graduands, the pro-chancellor urged them to contribute their quota to the society and be good ambassadors of NOUN.
The AUTHORITY reports that the convocation ceremony also witnessed presentation of awards to best graduating students and goodwill messages from vice chancellors of other universities present at the event, among others.
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