Herdsmen still encroach our premises — Unijos VC

The Vice Chancellor of University of Jos, Professor Seddi Sebastian Maimako, has said that herdsmen still encroach the University premises.

The VC stated this on Tuesday on a parly with Journalists on the occasion of the 29th and 30th combined Convocation Ceremonies of University of Jos, held at the Senate Chambers of the institution, in the State capital.

Maimako said, “University of Jos still have some insecure boundaries totalling up to over 199 hectares of land which are regularly encroached by herdsmen and the excuse they give for invading our property is that Unijos is a federal University and therefore the grass belongs to the federal government.

“We have had several meetings with them and on each occasion they will promise to stop grazing on our property, but you will come the next day to see them graze on the same land.

“We are only pursuing the part of peace through dialogue: our only challenge is lack of funds to secure the University property; if we have funds to fence the land, that will put a stop to herdsmen encroachment.

“We are also faced with issues of acute infrastructural deficit, inadequate funding and manpower, to the security breaches and frequent encroachment into University property among others.

“University of Jos has had it’s own share of difficulties: it behooves on our stakeholders including our Alumni, various tiers and agencies of government, beneficiary communities and especially our proprietor and the federal government to join us in a concerted effort to squarely address these challenges so that going forward ours will be a pleasant tale to narrate”, he said.