By SADIQ ABUBAKAR, Maiduguri –
Borno State Governor, Babagana Zulum has donated N81 million worth of equipment to the Civil and Water Engineering Department of University of Maiduguri in order to meet up with the Nigeria Universities Commission’s (NUC) accreditation, requirements which the institution could not meet up in the past.
The governor, who is a former graduate of the department and varsity as well as senior lecturer with the department procured twenty sets of equipment amounting to N81 million, among which are first of its kind in the Northeast.
Borno State Commissioner for Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovations, Dr. Babagana Malumbe Mustapha presented the equipments on behalf of the governor.
Dr. Malumbe, while presenting the items, said that the governor procured the equipments amounting to about N81 million on the request of the University, after the department failed to pass accreditation.
He said: “This came as a result of request from the University to the Executive Governor of Borno state, when The Department of Civil and Water Resources Engineering lost accreditation in the last accreditation exercise.”
“And I can remember what his Excellency said then, we cannot afford to be in government and a department in our own faculty will loose accreditation. That’s when he immediately directed the ministry to ensure that we procure the equipments”.
The Commissioner also observed that the greater percentage of the University are indigenes of Borno state and one of the pillars of his administration is education and as a professor who knows the importance of education, hence the prompt support to the University.
He further explained that issues of changes in monetary exchange policy hindered the procurement of the equipments on time.
The Vice Chancellor, University of Maiduguri, Professor Aliyu Shugaba, who received the equipments cannot hide his admiration and appreciation to Governor Babagana Umara Zulum.
He said: “On a very happy note that, I stand here on behalf of the University of Maiduguri and Faculty of Engineering to receive these highly valued equipments, that are necessary for teaching and research in the whole faculty of engineering, not only civil engineering.”
He said that right from the time the accreditation results came out and it was said that the faculty had been denied accreditation, Zulum called him and asked, “is it true that Department of Civil and Water Resources Engineering was denied accreditation? I said yes. He said can we please meet.” Shugaba concluded
He said that during their meeting, when he listed the reasons of loosing the accreditation, some of which are lack of the equipments, Zulum promptly invited the Commissioner and facilitated the procurement of the equipment.
Some of the items procured by the governor include – Triaxial Testing Machine with complete accessories, California Bearing Ratio (CBR) with complete accessories, High Performace Liguid Chromatography (HPLC), Marshall Testing Machin, Direct Shear box Machine with complete accessories, HI-target V9o Phe Dual frequency GNSS/RTK system with complete accessories, Jar Testing Apparatus, among others.
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