The management of Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta (FUNAAB), has constructed a 7 billion litres capacity water dam to address the challenge of scarcity of water in the institution.
This was disclosed by the outgoing Vice Chancellor of the school, Professor Felix Salako, on Monday, while conducting journalists round some of the projects embarked on by his administration since assumption of office.
Salako, whose tenure ends on October 31st, explained that the water dam would boost irrigation, domestic and industrial needs of the school, especially in the dry season.
He noted that numerous projects worth billions of naira were embarked on by his management team, since he cane on board as FUNNAB VC in 2017.
While stating that the dam project which commenced at the beginning of his administration, is about 95 per cent completed.
The VC said, “What remains is piping the water to the campus and if we get the fund, we will do that.
“The essence of the dam is to provide water for the university community. Though, we have boreholes in different locations on campus and the cost of these boreholes is huge. Also, the boreholes can fail any time, but with the dam, the problem of water on campus will become a thing of the past.”
He added that the federal institution will be willing to partner government, corporate organizations in making the project more viable, submitting that such partnership must be with equity.
Salako stated further that some ongoing projects might not be completed under his watch, while urging anyone that will succeed him to ensure completion of such projects.
“Administration is a continuous process, there should be continuity, and nobody should play God to the point of thinking that no other person can do it better.
“There are still some projects that are still ongoing, some of them may be completed in October. If you don’t start those projects, it’s very likely that the money available will not be enough in the nearest future. I want to believe that any person who is taking over, will complete what we have started”.
“We have endeavor to complete all the projects that we met because we believe that administration is a continuous process. Anyone who is coming in, should see the university as his university that belongs to us” .
“One cannot do beyond the capacity within the five years, but what is more important to me is that we use resources at our disposal effectively, efficiently and judiciously and am satisfied that have done my bit”.
The outgoing VC expressed satisfaction that the school had optimally utilised funds obtained from the federal government and other sources during his tenure, saying that the funds were deployed to execute his 12 – point agenda with special focus on infrastructural developments and procurement of necessary equipment for the university.
The 12 – point agenda, according to him, ranged from Dam and treatment plant, (new)projects, rehabilitation of university buildings, furniture, laboratory equipments, capacity development, generator and electricity supply, vehicles/tractors/utility vehicles, construction/rehabilitation of roads and car parks, entrepreneurship equipments, internet, computer/street light to tertiary education trust fund (Tetfund) supply of books.
No fewer than 226 of such projects subsumed in the 12 – point agenda were executed by his administration, noting that the university on his watch, expended over N1bn on building central laboratory alone which is equipped with cutting edge state of the art facilities.
Other projects were the university e – Library Extension named after Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka; a twin 250-seater capacity lecture theatre; Agricultural Farm Laboratory Complex; a 250- seater capacity lecture theatre and College of Engineering Phase II building, named after former President Olusegun Obasanjo; three separate 300 capacity auditoriums and 106 rooms hostel facility.
Speaking on accreditation of courses and programmes of the , Prof. Salako said, the National Universities Commission has accredited all the programmes, except Zoology, which has interim accreditation.