The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Prof. AbdulGaniyu Ambali, has reiterated his commitment to the protection of students’ welfare just as he tasked the students to continue to sustain the peaceful atmosphere on the University campus.
Prof. Ambali stated this while receiving leaders of the University’s Students’ Union as well as those of the National Association of Kwara State Students (NAKSS), who had come to honour him with awards in recognition of his immense contributions towards nation building, youth development, students’ empowerment and qualitative services to the University of Ilorin.
The Vice-Chancellor, who expressed a pleasant shock at the exhibition of the show of solidarity to his administration by the students, explained that the achievements recorded in the University under his leadership were a collective responsibility.
He said: “Whatever we have been able to achieve in the last four years is not only Ambali alone that has achieved it; it is the collective effort of all of us. As I said in one forum, if you have a good team then an individual in the team becomes less important because it means you are all using your brains, wisdom and using your skills to make sure that you all achieve one thing, which is, getting to your destination in peace.”
According to the VC, “that is all what we at the management level have been doing not knowing that over one million students from Kwara State, over 30,000 students of the University of Ilorin are all looking at us and measuring the progress that we are making on your behalf, because our own focus is to make sure that once you step into the University of Ilorin either as a staff or as a student, then your welfare becomes our responsibility”.
The multiple award-winning Professor of Veterinary Medicine said, “If you are a student, we want to make sure that we achieve the mission of the University that is to create an enabling, conducive environment for learning…to make sure that you get what you came here for, that is education, so that, by the time you are leaving the shores of the University of Ilorin, after three, four or five years, you are much better by far than when you came in.”
To this end, the Vice-Chancellor explained that the University had invested considerably in the infrastructures to aid the comfort of students, saying, “That is the more reason why we went into putting up sit-outs everywhere on campus to make sure that when students don’t have lectures, they have somewhere dignifying enough as a student to sit and wait for the next lecture. If you are in the hostel, we make sure that you feel comfortable with light, water and security”.
“We want to make sure that we prepare you for the world outside and we can only do that by protecting you. Don’t be surprised that over the last four years, you have witnessed probably your classmates, your friend, being expelled from University of Ilorin and you should ask yourself why. It is because we are ready to protect the majority from the vices of the minority.”
Prof. Ambali stated further, “Anybody that we found cheating in an exam and we ask him to step aside is for your own good because we want your certificates to be credible so that by the time you leave these shores and you show your certificates as coming from the University of Ilorin, they will know that, yes, that this person earned what he has and that is why all our students by the time they graduate from here and report to the NYSC camp, many of them have been able to showcase the discipline and the knowledge they have acquired here at the University of Ilorin and even the NYSC body has recognised that the Unilorin products are distinct and I have to commend you for that,…because by your discipline and behaviour, you are revalidating even the certificates of those who graduated ten or 20 years ago, and they feel proud that they are alumni of this place”.
The Vice-Chancellor also noted that as a result of the stable academic calendar and the peace enjoyed by all on campus, the University has been able to attract investors to construct more hostels to ease the challenge of students’ accommodation on campus.
Speaking earlier, the President of the National Association of Kwara State Students (NAKSS), Oyedepo AbdulHafiz, disclosed that Prof. Ambali was presented with the NAKSS Award of Excellence as an Icon of a Greater Nigeria and Nation Building, because of his “unprecedented accomplishments in all spheres of the University’s core mandates of teaching, research and community service.”
Oyedepo said, “In specific terms, the Vice-Chancellor is taking the welfare of staff and students very seriously; he is vigorously pursuing excellence in teaching and research; infrastructural development is receiving the necessary attention; excellent town and gown relationship is being promoted; internally generated revenue is being visibly enhanced while fiscal discipline, transparency and accountability are getting the necessary fillip”.
