Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike (MOUAU) Abia State has graduated a total of 4,958 persons on the occasion of its 8th convocation and silver Jubilee celebration.
A breakdown of the graduating students show that 98 bagged first class, 1437 made second class (upper Division) while 2111clinched second class (Lower Division).
Also, a total of 1276 garnered third-class whereas thirty-six went home with ordinary pass Degree.
Francis Ogbonnaya Otunta, a professor and vice-chancellor of the University, said since he assumed office on March 2016, he had been working tirelessly to ensure that the University ranks competitively among its peers on the global playing field.
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He revealed that since he took over as the VC, the institution had suffered severely from lack of fund.
“Initially, the University administration consoled itself thinking that the “hardware Component” (buildings and structures) funded from the NEEDS Assessment Fund which littered the entire campus were progressive development. We were sadly mistaken, as most of the projects were uncompleted despite the release of fund. I spent sleepless nights making concerted efforts to achieve the release of a second tranche constituting 40 per cent of 2013/2014 NEEDS Assessment Fund which is due to the University” said the VC.
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He hinted that some of N2,166,963,212.89 which was released to University enabled them to revive the 25 uncompleted projects that were parts of 45 projects that had been previously funded adding all contractors who were who owed received their money and asked to back to the site.
Otunta said to take off some pressure from the University and to shore up the Internally Generated Revenue of the Institution, his administration had set up committees to revive the already producing gallons of palm oil and other agribusinesses such as; piggery, fish farm, poultry among others.
The MOUAU VC also said that since he assumed office, the University in November 2016 was granted accreditation all but one of the 21 programmes on offer, adding that in May/June this year eight other programmes passed accreditation.
He, however, regretted that the University was faced with challenges following the closure of some departments and delisting of some management science programmes due to Federal Government directive for specialised universities.
UDOKA AGWU, UMUAHIA
