Enugu State Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi has said that his administration conceived the founding of the State University of
Medical and Applied Sciences (SUMAS) Igbo-Eno, Enugu State, to provide more opportunities for all desiring youths in the country, indigenes of Enugu State to gain training in chosen professional disciplines.
Speaking at the first matriculation ceremony of SUMAS, Ugwuanyi, who is the Visitor of the university pointed out the challenges that numerous applicants in Enugu State usually face gaining admission into tertiary institutions, especially for professional and competitive courses such as Medicine, Pharmacy, Allied Health Sciences, Engineering, Law, etc.
Thousands of well-qualified candidates, Governor Ugwuanyi said, are left stranded without admission in the country.
The governor revealed that it was against the backdrop of acute shortage of health personnel in the state and across the country as well as the consequential effects of brain drain in view of the fact that the few available are unceasingly leaving the country in their numbers that his administration decided to establish another state-owned university with a specialised brief on professional disciplines.
“As the records indicate, every year, thousands of candidates apply to study Medicine and Allied Health Sciences in the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) and Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT) respectively but a total of less than one thousand are given admission into these programmes in both institutions. This leaves several thousands of well-qualified candidates stranded without admission. The socio-economic implication of this is better imagined,” the governor said.
Governor Ugwuanyi went down memory lane to eulogise the first President of Nigeria and a foremost nationalist, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (The great Zik of Africa) and recalled his leadership role, patriotism and selflessness in founding the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, stressing that “the uniqueness of what Zik altruistically did for the nation and particularly for Nsukka by siting the university in Nsukka land remains a godly act, recreating Nsukka as a land and redefining the destinies of her people.
“It brought light into a place where there was darkness. It made Nsukka come into the map of the world when many Nigerian cities of today were hardly known to other Nigerians not to say Africa and beyond.”
Congratulating the “lucky pioneer students” including their parents/sponsors for their landmark and historic achievement of being admitted into the brand-new university, Governor Ugwuanyi added that his administration had invested a lot and had provided all the needed infrastructure for the smooth take off of the university.
His words: “There are six faculty buildings each with eight to 12 huge classrooms, laboratories and 36 offices. There are also two completed hostels each with 450 bed spaces (one for male and one for female), a medical centre that is well equipped to even provide tertiary medical services, the solar powered streetlights, and a teaching hospital which has reached an advanced state.
“I have also made adequate provisions to ensure that all the ongoing projects (the teaching hospital, the ICT building, the road network, the perimeter fencing and the main gate are completed. The entire university is provided with multiple numbers ofindustrial scale boreholes for efficient supply of water.
“In addition, the construction of 33KVA dedicated high voltage powerline from Nru-junction injection sub-station to the university has been approved for the university. This is to ensure steady power supply to the university.”