From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Vice-Chancellor, University of Abuja (UniAbuja), Prof AbdulRasheed Na’ Allah, on Monday, announced that 8, 769 students would participate in the 25th and 26th convocation of the University scheduled for the weekend.
He said the students are people that have been cleared by the school authorities have successfully completed their academic and non-academic works as required by their respective programmes.
Prof Na’ Allah, explained that the rise in the figure of graduands as against previous exercises was as a result of some students who were omitted from previous exercises due to one academic challenge or the other, adding that most of the graduands are from the Centre for Distance Learning and Continuing Education (CDL&CE).
He told journalists at a press conference in Abuja, on Monday, that 267 students would be earning PhDs, 2, 372 students would be earning Masters degrees while Postgraduate Diploma students are 214.
He added: “We are also clearing a backlog of about 2, 929 students from CDL&CE over the years.”
The Vice-Chancellor stated that, for the 25th convocation set, there are 23 students who earned First Class Degree; 1, 052 for Second Class Upper, 3, 061 students for Second Class Lower, and 324 for Third Class.
He added that, for the 26th set of convocation, 31 students would be awarded First Class Degree, 973 candidates would get Second Class Upper, 2, 920 would get Second Class Lower and 257 would be awarded Third Class.
“We have certain people earning what we call unclassified degrees and this is usually the medical doctors, veterinary doctors and MBBS. For the 25th convocation set, we have 21 Vet students, while there are 53 Vets and 44 MBBS students in the 26th convocation set.
He congratulated the graduating students and urged them to represent the school well as good ambassadors of the University wherever they found themselves in the world.
Prof Na’Allah maintained that the goal of the school management is to ensure that UniAbuja is properly positioned and known as a world-class university that students would be proud to identify with, within and outside Nigeria.
He said: “Over the years, we have tried to put in place different types of strategies to achieve this. We are moving, pushing and doing our best to make our school the best place for research and academic programmes.”
He announced that they have engaged in a private partnership to provide decent hostel accommodation for students of the school.
“Our goal is to ensure all our students are housed on campus, and the only way to make it happen is to look for more housing facilities from private investors with thousands of bed spaces. A lot of private investors have submitted a lot of proposals and very soon it will become a reality,” he said.