Less than a week after he was chosen as the Governor of the Year by Leadership Newspapers, controversial Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Godswill Akpabio, is set to be honoured by an Ivory Tower.
The Abia State University, ABSU, announced on Friday that it would honour Mr. Akpabio during its 22nd convocation ceremony.
Others to be honoured during the ceremony are Governor Peter Obi of Anambra as well as an oil merchant, Uche Ogah, the vice chancellor, Chibuzor Ogbuagu, said at the University’s 22 nd pre-convocation press briefing.
Mr. Akpabio has been in the news for his seemingly extravagant spending of state funds in a lavish manner. He is fond of donating millions of naira as gifts to individuals and party loyalists at will, thus drawing criticisms from Nigerians who question the basis for such donations when the state still has a high number of poor and unemployed people.
The governor also recently admitted, on live TV, to rigging a senatorial primary election in favour of an incumbent governor.
Apart from the honourees, 5,456 students- comprising 402 graduates in higher diploma, masters, and post graduate diploma courses and 5,054 others- would receive degrees and certificates at the convocation, the university boss said.
ABSU gets N1.5bn TETFUND projects
The Abia University Vice Chancellor also announced that the institution received N1.5 billion to execute the 2011/2012 merged Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) projects.
Mr. Ogbuagu added that N600 million was spent on the construction of a faculty block and other projects.
He said other projects which benefitted from the fund were the Faculty of Agriculture building, Centre for Entrepreneurship and the procurement of equipment for Basic Medical Sciences, furniture items and buses.
The don said that N936 million was being used for the construction of an e-library, Law Faculty block as well as the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences building.
He said other completed TETFUND projects were the faculties of Pharmacy and Basic Medical Sciences as well as the School of Postgraduate Studies building.
The vice-chancellor said that the university also bought a 500KVA generator and constructed nine laboratories.
He said the National Universities Commission (NUC) had given full accreditation to 31 academic programmes of the university, including Accountancy, Architecture, Nursing and other professional courses.
He said that 13 other programmes received interim accreditation by NUC in its February 25 release, following its November, 2012 visitation.
Mr. Ogbuagu debunked the speculation that the university owed its staff six-months salary areas and explained that the institution could not pay for the long period the workers were on strike.
He said the university’s wage bill had risen from N160 million to N270 million, while the cost of diesel for electricity increased from N3.2 million to N5.6 million.
The vice chancellor said that the institution depended solely on generator for power. He described funding as one of the major challenges facing the university.
Mr. Ogbuagu said that the ecological problem in the area was being tackled by the Federal Government.
2 comments:
good step
good step
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