We Must All Support Buhari To Succeed –UNILORIN VC

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Prof. AbdulGaniyu Ambali (OON), has again canvassed the support of all Nigerians for President Muhammadu Buhari, saying the new leader cannot fix the country alone.

Prof. Ambali, who stated this during a media interactive session in Ilorin, last Tuesday (May 26, 2015), noted that with his antecedents, the new President has rekindled hope in Nigerians that the country would soon take its pride of place in the committee of respected nations.

The Vice-Chancellor warned Nigerians not to see President Buhari as an island, saying he alone could not correct all the national ills single-handedly. “The President needs our cooperation. We are the ones that elected him based on his antecedents and we have hope in the coming administration but he can’t do it all alone”, he said.


Prof. Ambali said that the fact that the President had decided that he would choose his ministers by himself means that he would choose those that have the same dream with him to work with him.

The Vice-Chancellor, who also used the occasion to dispel the rumour making the round that a female student of the University was raped to death on campus, said that the rumour was “baseless, unfounded and far from the truth”.

Prof. Ambali said that although the University recently lost a female student, who was a sickle cell patient, her death had no connection with any rape incident.

Saying there is no iota of truth in the rumour of rape on campus, the Vice-Chancellor pointed out that the death of the lady, who had been hospitalised for some time, only coincided with the period people were peddling rumour about rape cases.

Prof. Ambali said, “Let me inform our dear parents and Nigerians through you (the journalists) that there is no iota of truth in the rumour.  We have a very robust security system with modern way of policing together with our own traditional outfit. Since we started   the synergy between the two we have been getting positive results. So, the rumour is not true.”

He said that the University had put in place adequate security measures to address related issues  through regular advice to students, on the campus radio station and other media outlets, not to walk alone, to be careful of where they go, to restrict their movements within the recreation centres and to stay within the school environment.

On the recent expulsion of some students, Prof. Ambali said that the University management usually feels very sad when it has to resort to asking people to leave, adding that all the same, the University was established to build students that are found worthy in  character and learning.

The Vice-Chancellor said, “Despite their academic excellence if we feel that character-wise they have refused to be moulded, we are left with no choice than to tell them to leave. The rate of expulsion is not too high or the sacrifice of those that are affected is not too much when you compare their numbers with the numbers of students we have. We have about 30,000 students. When parents send their wards to study it means that their welfare is under our care; which means we have to monitor all of them and if we find one of them as a threat, we often ask that person to go.”

He said that the severity of the offences varies, adding that hardly does the University expel students based on dress code, as there are other forms of punishment  which the University adopts for such less serious offences. He however said that offences that relate to   examination malpractices and cultism carry zero tolerance label.

Prof. Ambali said that “the specific offences of the expelled students are always released to their parents or guardians but we try as much as possible not to publicise these in the hope that the punishment meted on them will assist them in trying further education elsewhere.

The Vice-Chancellor disclosed that the University had made its mark on research funding, especially within the last one year, saying that the University of Ilorin got the highest allocation in the last TETFUND research grant released to universities in the country.

He said, “We submitted 20 applications and six of our researchers succeeded .That was the highest number of those that got the research grant that year. I think only 16 grants were awarded throughout the country and for a university to get six and leaving the remaining ten for 140 universities to compete for, I think we have tried very well”.


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