ABUAD’s 2018 milestones, a success story —Afe Babalola

FOR Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), 2018 remains a year worthy of note, as the institution recorded landmark academic attainments and uplift in the physical infrastructure in the institution.

The university, founded in 2009 by the lawyer and philanthropist, Chief Afe Babalola, had grown in leaps and bounds, becoming a reference point in academic success in Nigeria.

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At its 2018/2019 matriculation ceremony held on the campus of the institution in Ado-Ekiti, on Monday, January 21, the elated Chief Babalola was grateful to God that he was able to carry out the vision. More importantly, he was happy that the institution had recorded the landmark feats, earlier than he had imagined.

ABUAD graduated its first set of students in 2013, a total of 101, with 18 of them earning first class.

Also speaking at a ceremony, where the institution matriculated 2,000 students, the Deputy Vice Chancellor and Provost, College of Law, Professor E. Smaranda Olarinde, said 2018 was particularly thrilling in the history of ABUAD.

Reeling out some of the achievements, she said its College of Engineering was described by the Nigeria Society of Engineers (NSE) as the template for engineering education in the country.

A 200-level student of the Department of Economics, ABUAD, Nellieken Ochinke, emerged the second best out of the 2,500 candidates who sat for the last Accounting Technician Scheme (ATS) examination of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) in West Africa.

In 2018, UNESCO instated a Professorial chair on Enterpreneurship and Sustainable Development in the College of Sciences of the institution.

In college of medicine and health sciences, 43 students presented for the university’s first MBBS examination recorded 100 per cent pass rate with eight distinctions – the equivalent of First Class in other disciplines.

The accomplishment makes ABUAD the first university in the country to produce medical doctors in six and a half years after its medical programme kicked off.

In its college of law, ABUAD graduates stood tall in the externally-moderated professorial examination, the 2018 final bar examination of the Nigerian Law School. The overall best student in the Nigerian Law School examination, Ekop Naomi Uwem, a graduates of ABUAD, emerged first from among 6,000 students who took the examination. She is also a recipient of 13 prizes with other ABUAD graduates receiving 24 awards out of the total 36 awarded by the Council of Legal Education.

The college also partnered with the Nigerian Institute of Chartered Arbitrators (NICArb) as it trains the students while at graduation, students of the Law College would have been inducted as Associate Members of the NICArb.

Professor Olarinde said due to the outstanding achievements, even the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, wrote on Monday, October 22, 2018 that “ABUAD is a private university established less than 10 years is clearly a star with outstanding performance of having a dozen first class. This is what you get where there is strategic investment in human and material resources, for which we warmly congratulate the Founder and Proprietor, Aare Afe Babalola.”

On physical infrastructure, the university, through the Parents-Teachers Consultative Forum (PTCF), built a 2,500-capacity sitting amphitheatre, at the cost of over N500 million. The foundation was laid on April 17, 2015.

Facilities in the amphitheatre include the main auditorium, flying gallery, a conference room to sit 150 people, a boardroom, three standard offices, a suite for a family, mini restaurant, eight standard shops, a banking hall or multipurpose hall, inbuilt garage that can take 10 cars, extended parking lot, etc.

Speaking at the inauguration, Chief Babalola said he was happy that parents could partner with the institution to make it the best in the country.