Pro-Chancellor, VC Challenge fresh students

Bode Ayorinde, Pro-chancellor and Chairman, Governing Council, and Professor Adebayo Odebiyi, Vice-chancellor of the University, have charged the third set of students to seize the opportunity provided by the University to make them through achievers at the end of the stay in the ivory tower. They said this at different for a organized to as part of orientation programme for new 2009/2010 set of students of the University at its Idasen-Ute Road Permanent Site.

The Pro-chancellor, who was speaking to the new students on “Vision and Mission of the University and the need for students to Key into it”, traced the journey of the University from when the Federal Government of Nigeria through the National Universities Commission (NUC) issued its operating licence in December 11, 2007 till it commenced operations in April 2 and when its history-making first set of “Achievers” resumed on April 7, 2009.

Ayorinde, who acknowledged God’s abundant Grace since then, said there had been no hiccup in the University’s academic programmes because of the stakeholders’ “determination to excel and excelling in the spirit of hard work”.  While acknowledging the commitment of the Council, Management and staff to the mission and vision of the University, he said “every great thing starts small,” alluding to the birth of Jesus Christ and President Barrack Obama of the United States. “We are grateful for what God has done,” he said. He told the fresh students of the University’s vision to be the best in Africa and one of the best in the world, the path which it is already treading as it is the best among its peers licenced in 2007. He assured them that by 2027, when the University would be celebrating its two decades of existence, “it should be the best in Africa”.

However, to realize the vision, which he described as “the contract the University has with Nigeris, he said the students have a role to play. ‘It is a joint vision which needs your effort,” he said, adding that that as the University’s ambassadors to the outside world, they are to be conscious of their behaviour and appearance because “the way you dress is the way you will be addressed”. He emphasised the University’s zero tolerance for cultism and violence, stressing that whoever is caught in the web would be shown the exit door. “If you box, you box your box,” he said.

He assured the new students that the University Council and Management would put everything the students need in place to achieve their goals, and would not do anything that would compromise the standard set or jeopardize NUC’s full accreditation of the University academic programmes.

The Vice Chancellor, Professor Odebiyi, while welcoming the “new set of Achievers” to the campus, admonished them to believe in themselves even when confronted with daunting challenge and refrain from joining the bandwagon. “In every situation, the greatest problem is yourself”, he said, adding that “tough time never lasts but tough people do”.