No fewer than 3,000 prisoners that are serving different terms across the nation’s prisons are currently studying at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN).
This was disclosed by the NOUN Librarian, Dr Adam Gambo Saleh when he was responding to a question the university committee on students enrollment visited the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Kaduna on Thursday.
Gambo noted that the university decided to pave the way for the inmates in order to make them better citizens when they are out of prisons walls.
According to him, no fewer than 3,000 prisoners are pursuing different degrees across the country, saying the university has centres in some of the prisons across the country.
‘It will interest you to know that some are pursuing their first degrees, while others are pursuing their second degrees and most of them are studying Peace and Conflict resolutions degrees.
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‘When we asked them why are they pursuing this degree(Peace and Conflict) they will tell us they want to see how they will improve their lives having stayed in prisons, he declared.
Earlier, the head of the delegation, Garba Sani remarked that they have a student enrollment of over 100,000 students but expressed his dismay that out of this number the North West and the North East zones have a combined enrollment of 10,000 students.
According to him, the nonchalant attitude of the people of the zones propelled the university to set up a committee to visit the zones and see what are responsible for the poor enrollment.
While calling on more enrollment, he said the university is the only university that is student-driven, saying, this is the only university that allows students to graduate at the time he wishes.
To this end, he also called on journalists to help in propagating the programmes of the university to the public so that the aim of establishing the university will not be defeated.
Also speaking the Vice Chairman of NUJ Kaduna Council, Muhammad Sabiu assured the delegation that the union is ready to partner with then NOUN to see more students are enrolled in the zone.
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