Outgoing UNILAG VC solicits unalloyed support for successor

In his valedictory speech delivered to journalists at a media chat organised as part of activities to mark his sendoff ceremony, outgoing Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Professor Rahaman Bello, has urged the university staff, students and other stakeholders to give full cooperation to his successor, Prof Oluwatoyin Ogundipe.

Giving scorecard of his five year tenure, Bello said he came into the office as the acting Vice Chancellor at a moment of crises having lost his predecessor, the late Adetokunbo Shofoluwe, who died in office as the 10th Vice Chancellor on May, 12, 2012.

He recalled that as the university was preparing to give the late Shofoluwe a befitting burial, the former President Goodluck Jonathan on May 29, 2012 announced the purported change of the name of the university which was followed by various protests from students and other stakeholders thus throwing the campus into serious crises.

He said his administration set out to make strong impression on the overall development of the university and despite seemingly insurmountable challenges, they were able to make remarkable achievements in physical planning and infrastructural development.

“In terms of academics and research, the university made some significant strides in the areas during the period under review.

Among the remarkable ones are the curriculum development and the introduction of new programmes, resuscitation of the Graduate Assistantship Programme, establishment of the Quality Assurance Unit, enhanced e-result processing among others”, he said.

He also noted that his administration was able to graduate a total of 50,785 students in the last five years accounting for about 25 percent of the total number of graduates produced by the University in its 55 years of existence.

“Not just that, about half of these are post graduate students making us slowly becoming a postgraduate institution. We now produce averagely 100 highly qualitative Ph.Ds. annually”, he said.

Prof. Bello said his administration also promoted academic excellence as the university has produced 292 Professors since inception out of which 104 were appointed in the last five years accounting for 35.5 percent of the total in the whole of the 55 years of the University with about 354 inaugural lectures delivered since inception out of which 75 accounting for 21.2 percent were delivered during his tenure.

“I am convinced and can say with all modesty that I will be leaving office with fond memories and UNILAG a better place in terms of teaching, research and service to the community”, he said.

In another development, wife of the outgoing VC, Mrs. Momudat Bello, who was the President UNILAG Women Society, led other members of the Society to commission a 502 bed space female hostel donated by the group to the university.

She said the initiative came from the observation of members of the Society of the acute shortage of accommodation on campus for students of the University as out of over 40,000 students of the Institution, accommodation can only be provided for 8,000 of them.