Education

NOUN: Our one million enrollment target sacrosanct — Okebukola

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THE National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) has said its target to double its students’ enrollment across all study centres nationwide to one million by 2024 is non-negotiable.

It has also disclosed that 18,000 students will graduate across diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate studies at its 2019 convocation ceremony scheduled for Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, between March 22 and 23.

Chairman of governing council of the university, Professor Peter Okebukola, stated this while addressing newsmen shortly after the 54th meeting of the council held in Lagos last Thursday.

According to him, the proposed one million enrollment is in accordance with (and a follow-up to) the three-year ministerial strategic plan to increase access of qualified Nigerians to university education.

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While disclosing that the Federal Government had now gazetted and published the NOUN’s Amendment Act 2018, he said this development did not only place NOUN at par with other recognised universities in the country but also provided it with full legitimacy as a full-time Open and Distance Learning institution.

Okebukola, a former executive secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), reaffirmed that NOUN graduates would now be participating in the one-year mandatory National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) scheme and its Law graduates would attend the Nigeria Law School.

He explained that the university is already repositioning itself to improve the quality of learning delivery system and make its graduates the best in the Nigerian university system and employers’ delight by 2025 as wells as the best ODL university in Africa five years after.

He also declared that the university had set in motion mechanism to implement the recently granted World Bank African Centre of Excellence on Technology Enhanced Learning (ACETEL), noting that the project, which is in five-year cycle, would gulp between $4 million and $6 million.

Okebukola equally disclosed that the university had now lifted ban on its alumni association and also promoted new set of six members of staff, including Professor McCarthy Eserinume, charging them to see their new positions as a call to greater service.

On his part, the vice chancellor, Professor Abdalla Adamu, explained that only qualified prison inmates are currently given scholarship by the university irrespective of their courses of study and levels and not students with special needs.

He said the aim of limiting the scholarship to prisoners is because their movement is restricted and they have no personal means of livelihood.

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