By Victor Ofure Osehobo
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Benin, Professor Lilian Salami on Thursday in Benin City, said the University has grown in leaps and bounds, after 50years of existence.
She said the evidence of this is the students’ population which increased from 108 to 45, 000 and staff strength which also increased from 20 to 8000 during the period.
Speaking ahead of the 50th Founder’s Day of the institution, she said among its graduands are well placed personnel in all fields of human endeavour globally and commended the UNIBEN Alumni Association for being a worthy partner in progress.
“The University has produced over 350,000 graduands. These individuals, incidentally, are well placed. A lot of them are CEOs of big establishments, trail blazers. We have had ministers, Governors, and others”, according to the VC.
The VC also said that the ivory tower has been able to fill the manpower gap and met technological demands in area of innovation, research under Covid-19 hibernation despite the dwindled resources which has dipped by 90 percent as a result of closure of institution since March 2020.
She stated that University has stopped awarding contracts and resort to the use of direct labour n the administration of the University, pending amicable resolution of the federal government and ASUU stalemate.
“I am the 10th Vice Chancellor of this institution. These persons have worked tirelessly to bring the University of Benin to where it is right now. Abinitio, the number of students was only 108 with a Staff strength of less than 20 then.
“But, today, we have grown. Still counting, we have over 45,000 students and Staff strength of over 8000.
“Then, the programme was just to meet the manpower and technological demands for the Country then. There was two departments at that time. What we have now is over 15 Faculties. A College of Medicine, we have three centers of excellence and two or three institutions.
“So, in terms of the growth of the University, we have grown about 200-300 per cent from where we started from. In terms of Staff strength. In terms of students, we have done enough. The resources have been very low. Payments by students account for 90 per cent of our IGR. So, what we have been doing is self help. We have refused given out contracts because we cannot afford contracts now. We have all become bricklayers and supervisors. We do all of that now. We use our internal workers and employees to drive the system.
“If you have been away from a University for one or more that two months, when you are coming, you will discover that the University is beginning to take a different look. So, we are waiting for the University to re-open so that can resume teaching and learning processes”, she said.
