Borno State University gets NUC’s recognition, commences enrollment

Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State was on Monday presented with letter of recognition of the state university by the National Universities Commission (NUC) a move he described as a source of confidence building towards revitalising the lost glory in the education sector in the state, due largely to the activities of insurgents.

Abubakar Rasheed, executive secretary of NUC, while presenting the certificate of recognition to the overnor, lauded the persistence of the government of Borno State in ensuring it followed instructions as spelt out by the commission to be able to get the letter of recognition for the state university.

By this recognition, the Borno State University is now 144th university in Nigeria, while the eight recently approved universities by the Federal Executive Council also waits to get provisional licences from the NUC, which would eventually give it capacity to commence operations.

Speaking on NUC’s recognition of the state university, Governor Shettima said the recognition signaled a step towards confidence building in ensuring that Borno got back on track on education, which had been largely affected due to the ravaging of the states by the insurgents.

“Boko Haram is highly focused on attacking Western education, hence this explains why since 2011, 5,335 classrooms have been destroyed including primary, secondary and tertiary schools in the state. The objective of Boko Haram was clear, and that is to bring down education in the state,” Shettima said.

“We remain eternally indebted to the NUC for the accelerated response in recognising our state University. If we can’t fix education, there is no nation. The focus of the University as the name entails will be all encompassing, and will focus on education, sciences, and ICT, in addition of training future leaders of the country,” he said.

Commenting on the issue of security, ”if there is one group of people that would be grateful to the President of the Federal Republic, it is those of us from Borno State because of remarkable improvement in our security fortunes. Maiduguri, I can tell you, is more secured than Abuja. Boko Haram has been considerably degraded, although there are still hiccups in the counter insurgency operations,” the governor said.

This is a major confidence building process, and it will cascade down to the other aspects of our state life because of the impact of Universities in bringing about socio-economic development while impacting directly or indirectly on the people,” he explained.

Speaking also, Ali Ndume, senator representing Borno South Constituency, at the event, said: “We are lucky to have a governor showing great concerns on education. Nigerians are resilient people, especially we from Borno. We live in the desert. We are down, and we hope to be up again.

“Nigerian Universities have not been able to bridge the gap. You still notice several students who even reach the cut off mark of JAMB not getting admitted because of access to higher education. This is a good stride for us in Borno State.

“We are short of Universities in this country, as many Nigerian students still go to Ghana, Togo for their further studies. This is a good step in resuscitating our education system and restore the confidence of our people,” Ndume said.

“So far, the state government has awarded a contract of N3.4 billion contracts on the development of infrastructure in the various departments and faculties to strengthen the infrastructural development. NUC team has paid us several visits and has also lauded our efforts, hence this certificate of recognition,” he earlier said.