UniAbuja Graduates 9,172
Ahead of this week’s launch of the Student Loan Scheme, President Bola Tinubu has described it as a game changer that will enable indigent students to access Federal Government loans to fund their educational pursuit.
Speaking, yesterday at the 28th convocation ceremony of University of Abuja, Tinubu urged universities to leverage their enormous and critical human capital, be proactive and key into the Renewed Hope agenda of the present administration in their various areas of competence and relevance.
Represented by the Director of University Education in the ministry, Rakiya Ilyasu, Tinubu said members of the soon-to-be inaugurated Governing Councils of federal universities would comprise competent Nigerians with the zeal and commitment to govern and reinvigorate the universities in line with the provisions of the extant laws and well-known traditions of the system.
It is expected that the incoming councils will give new momentum to the governance and administration of our universities to sustain the recent gains in the system.
“The government has also increased allocations to the education sector in its appropriation for the year 2024, within which appropriate provisions have been made to cater for the various needs and tackle the current challenges of the sector.
“For instance, the take-off of the Students Loan Scheme this year will be the game-changer in allowing Nigerian students afford the cost of tertiary education in the country. The school feeding programme also reintroduced under the purview of the Federal Ministry of Education will be appropriately funded to encourage attendance and enhance learning by pupils in the schools.
“These efforts by the present administration are aimed at ensuring that universities are strengthened and reinvigorated for the fulfilment of their mandate. Given their critical and pivotal role to national development, especially in this knowledge-driven era, this administration is determined to ensure that they are properly equipped and managed to remain competitive to restore their past glory and global reckoning. However, it behooves on the managers of our universities to turn these institutions into beacons of hope for the greater tomorrow of our nation.”
In his address, the university’s Vice Chancellor, Prof. Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah, stated the school has assumed the status of a world class institution.
According to the don, the award of degrees and honors was a culmination of the ‘restoration of normalcy in its operations and the desire to consolidate the recent gains in the academic and physical development of the university.
“It is a befitting trajectory that this administration has set for the university on coming on board about five years ago.”
He stressed the need for all stakeholders to sustain the partnership and commitment to the progress and development of the university.
Out of 9,172 students that graduated from various academic arms, 7,896 were first degrees, 383 postgraduate diplomas, 742 master’s degrees and 151 with doctorate degrees.
Among those with first degrees, 41 graduated with first class.
