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Fintiri to Adamawa varsity’s Profs: solve electricity, other challenges
By Onimisi Alao, Yola
Governor Ahmadu Fintiri of Adamawa State has charged the 50 professors at the state university to prove their worth by providing solutions to challenges facing the people, beginning with the electricity, water and other service problems within the campus.
The Adamawa State University, Mubi, which was established 19 years ago with three professors, among other academic staff, currently boasts of 50 professors, but the university is beset with challenges, including erratic power supply and shortage of safe water.
Governor Fintiri, speaking Saturday during the university’s convocation ceremony at the main campus in Mubi, said it is incumbent on the university community, with its array of professors, to help itself.
Fintiri said, “As we depart from here after this convocation today, I leave you with the challenge of solving basically the service problems within your campus. My findings reveal that the university is grappling with service problems such as water, electricity and waste disposal.
“Instead of spending millions on diesel to power generators, for instance, why can’t the university devote itself to research in alternative and cheap energy for the campus?
“With all the Physics and other related researchers, why must the university be part of the diesel guzzling community? We need to demonstrate excellence on the campus in order to export it into the society.”
Throwing a direct challenge to the professors in the university, Governor Fintiri said, “I am happy with the surge in the number of professors as a result of the recent promotion exercise in the university, but I will be happier if such promotions were benchmarked on the basis of researches and innovations/inventions linked to markets, industries and patents.”
Vice Chancellor of the Adamawa State University, Prof Kaletapwa Farauta had complained while delivering her address during the 5th-13th Combined Convocation ceremony that the university depends almost wholly on power generators as electricity supply to Mubi is very epileptic.
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The VC who also lamented that the university was holding its convocation after 12 years of the last one in 2009, appologised to graduands of the succeeding accademic sessions who could not be convocation until now.
After the first convocation in 2006 and the second in 2009, the university was weighed down with crises, including Boko Haram occupation of the main campus in 2014, disharmony between staff unions and management afterwards, and COVOD-19 which foreclosed a move for convocation last year.
The university graduated over 11,000 students at the convocation of Saturday, including 92 who bagged first-class degrees
A highlight of the convocation was award of a honorary doctorate degree to former governor of the State, Boni Haruna, during whose tenure the unversity was established in 2002.
Chancellor of the university, Muhammed Seyoji Ahmed who is the Emir of Pindiga in Gombe State, also bagged honorary doctorate degree.
