Include private varsities in your interventions, VC tells TETFund

Vice-Chancellor of Gregory University, Uturu, Abia State, Prof. Cele Njoku... Credit: Sunday Nwakanma

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The Tertiary Education Trust Fund has been urged to extend its interventions to private universities in the country.

The Vice-Chancellor of Gregory University, Uturu, Abia State, Prof. Cele Njoku, made the appeal on Wednesday in Uturu while briefing journalists ahead of the institution’s 10th convocation ceremony.

Njoku said the current funding structure, which limits TETFund interventions to federal institutions and, more recently, state-owned universities and higher institutions, was discriminatory.

“I am appealing to TETFund to extend its funding to private universities, particularly Gregory University, Uturu. Let it be a policy,” she said.

The VC also disclosed that of the 13 new courses recently recommended by the National Universities Commission for adoption by universities, GUU has taken up three: Artificial Intelligence, International and Security Studies, and Cooperative Economics and Management.

She appealed to governments at all levels to assist the university in addressing its major challenges, including electricity, power supply, and access roads.

“We are fighting the challenges, but we need help with light, power and access road.

“Here, we don’t have incidents of insecurity challenges,” she said, adding that the university will graduate about 334 students across Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral levels.

Founded in 2012 with three colleges, the institution now has 12 colleges and 54 departments equipped with state-of-the-art facilities to better prepare students for future engagements.

“We bought state-of-the-art equipment as accreditation demands. The school has determined lecturers who do a lot to follow the trend in technology and allow our students to develop and exhibit their talents, and we don’t let the students go,” she said.

Njoku said the university equips students with skills through entrepreneurial education, including training at its ultra-modern Innovation Hub in Abuja, “where they conceive a project and come back with a product.”

She added that the university also operates a Moot Court for law students.

She said nursing and medical students receive “high practical orientation,” and that the School of Nursing now graduates students with licences that enable them to sit for foreign professional examinations.

“Where others are lagging, we are coming up. We also sponsor our students to study abroad,” she said.

According to her, students are taught five foreign languages—French, Spanish, German, Chinese and Hebrew—as well as Igbo as a local language.

She noted that the university’s Igbo Renaissance Centre was established to promote cultural rebirth.

“These foreign languages will equip our graduates who have the need for trips to these countries to be able to communicate effectively and transact their business,” she said.

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