UNIBEN have since inception produced over 350,000 graduates – VC

The Vice-Chancellor of University of Benin (UNIBEN), Lilian Salami, on Thursday said over 350,000 students had in the past 50 years graduated from the institution.

Salami made the disclosure in an interview with newsmen in Benin City.

She said a lot of the graduands are captains of industries, trailblazers, ministers, governors, national and state lawmakers, ambassadors among others.

“In fact, University of Benin top the number of employees that we have in Nigeria oil and gas sector.
We have done very well in trying to achieve the mission and vision of the University. I think we are doing quite well,” she said.

The vice-chancellor, who said the institution metamorphosed from the defunct Bendel institute of technology in 1970 to when it was taken over by the Federal Government in 1971 and later converted to university in 1973, noted that the vision of the founding fathers was initially for manpower and technological development.

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She added that the vision has now been expanded to include the production of quality marketable and innovative graduates.

She also explained that the number of students which were only 108 with a staff strength of less than 20 has at today increased to over 45,000 students and over 8000 Staff strength respectively.

While noting that there was only about two academic departments at inception, she added that the school had expanded to over 15 Faculties, a College of Medicine, three centres of Excellence and two or three institutions.

Speaking on her first 12 months in office as the Vice-Chancellor of the institution, she disclosed that she came in at the period the COVID-19 pandemic was ravaging the state, Nigeria and the entire world.

According to her, “in the past 12 months when I came into office, COVID-19 has kept us indoors. In spite of that, this administration has continued to work on the pillars. We have decided to drive the University on.

“One of the ways, we are trying to see how we can fund the project and drive for the partnership for development since the resources that are coming from the federal government can’t really do that.

“We have also looked at the infrastructure, training programmes for marketable graduates. We have changed and developed infrastructure on ground in collaboration with different bodies and enterprises.

“We have tried to create a very strong Alumni association because we believe that most ivory towers that are found around the world are actually driven by the initiative.

“The resources have been very low. Payments by students account for 90 per cent of our Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). So, what we have been doing is self-help.

“We have refused given out contracts because we cannot afford contracts now. We have all become bricklayers and supervisors. We use our internal workers and employees to drive the system”, she added.