Date: 2017-01-11

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Prof. AbdulGaniyu Ambali, on Tuesday said the university had not experienced workers' strikes or students' unrest in the last 17 years.

The V-C stated this at an interactive session with newsmen in Ilorin, Kwara State.

He admitted that this was one of the reasons why the University had remained the most sought after by admission seekers for more than four years consecutively.

Ambali, however, said that the university had continued to have its fair share of challenges and "we are tackling them".

He said: "January 2017 will be the 17th year that the University of Ilorin will continue to be consistent in opening its doors to students."

The V-C recounted some of the challenges his management had faced since October 2012 when he assumed office, saying there is no road that is smooth or trouble-free.

Ambali said: "The road to heaven is not easy; you have to work for it. "If you are a Muslim, you have to pray five times daily; you have to fast and you have to, in fact, abide by the five pillars of Islam. "If you are a Christian, it has its own protocol. It is not easy to achieve what the protocol states."

The Vice-Chancellor used the occasion to clarify what he called the current misinformation about changes in the costs and delays in the delivery of the PC tablets to the students.

He said: "To start with, the tablet project started four years ago when we conceived the idea to make University of Ilorin's graduates well-equipped for the challenges of the outside world which they will soon face when they leave here."

Ambali said that until sometimes in 2015, when the naira began to depreciate significantly in value, the project was smooth and trouble-free.

The V-C added that most operations in the university were digital, adding that the business of the university's Senate was paperless.

He said: "You will not see professors and senate members of the university carrying lots of pamphlets in their hands going to the senate chambers. "Unilorin was the first to start the Computer-Based Test in the country. We started it more than 10 years ago."

He said that for the university to be having a paperless Senate, having cashless environment, the teaching and learning on the campus have to be ICT-based.

He said it was heart-warming to hear laudable achievements from students of the university at their various NYSC camps and the offices where they were employed.

On the issue of accommodation, the VC said: "When we started the project about four years ago, about 3,000 out of over 30,000 students that we had were accommodated on the campus.

"The present administration under my leadership embarked on an advocacy to sell the university to friends of the University. "This was done to attract them to come and build hostels on our campus under the Federal Government's directive of Build-Operate-and-Transfer."