By Teryima Andrew
Vice Chancellor of the Plateau state University (PLASU) Bokkos Prof Doknan Sheni has said he have been able to reposition the university for qualitative educational delivery to the citizenry.
The Vice Chancellor stated this Monday, at the university board room, while briefing Journalists on it activities, as his tenure draw close to an end.
He stated some of the major achievement his tenure attained during his five year tenure as Vice Chancellor.
Prof Sheni said the institution has retrain 64 staff, including 10 Phd’s from foreign universities, sponsored by the university, already graduated and are lecturing in the institution.
The university Don said the university intends to train 17 Phd’s annually, who will in turn lecture in the institution annually, he unformed that PLASU
He also said the university has step up in it admission of students from 300 to 1500 students this year 2018 in all of the programmes and courses been offered at the institution.
Prof Sheni whose five year tenure ends this February, thanked the Plateau state government for have found him worthy to serve the state that capacity.
He call on his possible successor to maintain high accademic standard, as a means of giving a good name to PLASU to compete among the 160 universities operating in Nigeria.
On the remaining courses waiting accreditations, the VC said the university must ensure that the accreditation was successful.
“In this next face of accreditations of programmes, we need the 15 programmes to be accredited, we have no option rather than the approval for the accreditation, because if we fail to meet up this time around, it means all the programmes affected will be suspended, and students studying the affected courses won’t graduate.”
The university Don said one of the major insecurity challenge confronting the institution was unauthorized persons gaining entrance into the institution’s premises without approval, thereby harming staff and students.
He lamented that the some of the hoodlums do harass female students of the institution.
“One of the major insecurity challenge confronting us is that some persons do enter here (university) and harass our female students.”
“Apart from the harassment, there are one or two deaths resulting from such actions, some of our staff were beating off by some residents living around the university community. We also have cases of cows grazing on our land. We had cause to report most of the cases to the police. Residents living in front of the university must be sent parking.”
PLASU Vice Chancellor revealed that the university had existed eleven years without accreditation of any programme from National Universities Commission NUC, which had hindered graduands from the university from participating in the compulsory NYSC scheme; but the challenge has been solved.
Another major challenge facing the institution as explained by the Vice Chancellor was inadequate lecturers, funding of the university, inadequate accommodations for both staff and students.
He revealed that the entire staff of the university including the VC live in Jos; PLASU is situated about 60 kilometers away from the state capital Jos.
Other challenges facing the university as gathered during the press conference include poor road network, shortages of portable drinking water and lack of stable electricity.
