Date: 2019-10-23

The University of Ilorin has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Kyungpook National University (KNU) in the Republic of Korea.

It is a consortium made of industry and academic experts including KNU and Korea Southern Power Corporation and University of Ilorin.

The Vice Chancellor, University of Ilorin, Professor Sulyman Age Abdulkareem disclosed this on Monday at a press Conference to mark the 35th Convocation ceremony of the University of Ilorin.

Collaboration goal

Professor Abdulkareem said work is ongoing on the University of Ilorin Science and Engineering Hub/Open Laboratory in collaboration with Infobyte Power Solutions Limited.

He said, "The goal of the collaboration is to come up with the feasibility of powering rural communities around with turn-key water turbine and renewable zinc air fuel cell".

The Vice Chancellor stressed that these efforts will also ultimately support and boost the Nigeria Government's rural electrification programme.

According to him, the Institute of Sugar Research is passionately involved in various collaborative studies to develop improved high-yielding varieties of sugar cane for the Nigeria sugar industry.

"I am highly fascinated by Professor Obaloye's discovery, which promises to have great potential for curing cancer and also the discovery from one of our Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemistry which has the potential of being developed into an anti-tubarculous drug, which is a global challenge and an endemic disease in tropical Africa, likewise Cancer is now spreading widely among people in our society".

Potentials

He stated that the University would soon be developed to be an irresistible point of call for industries and agencies seeking Solutions that have high entrepreneur or commercial potentials.

"Our goal is to develop into a university that will have arrays of grants amounting to multi-million dollars in our pool. This is the Hallmark of reputable high-flying Universities across the world."

Abdulkareem said the Distance Learning Degree programme is set to take off soon with a goal of quality education to all and sundry, with a take-off grant of 20 million Naira and additional 77.1 million Naira from the NEEDS Assessment Funds.

He stressed that the University has taken over in Linguistics Immersion Centre in internalisation efforts with a total of 37 students from the Republic of Benin, Sudan, Cameroon, Togo, Libya, Cote D' Voire, Nigeria and Guinea which makes the University with the highest number of international students.

He, however, encouraged the Nigerian Government to passionately and sincerely pursue its promise and determination to increase annual budget on education to 15 percent of the total annual budget in order to bring out the annual education budget to 26 percent as recommended by UNESCO.