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By Emmanuel Adeleke
A total of 13 students bagged First Class as the Kola-Daisi University Ibadan (KDU), Ibadan, holds its second convocation ceremony on Thursday, October 6, 2022.
The vice chancellor of the university, Professor Adeniyi Olatunbosun, disclosed this on Tuesday, at the pre-convocation press conference, held at the main auditorium of the institution.
Olatunbosun, who gave the total number of graduating students as 92, said they have been equipped with quality leadership skills to be good ambassadors of the institution and to project all the core values of integrity, handwork and honesty imbibed during their stay.
“There are 13 first class graduates, who from their very first day in the university have been consistent with their performance and all of them have enjoyed the institution’s scholarship scheme.
“The scholarship was designed to encourage students to excel in their disciplines. The scheme grants half payment of tuition for any student with the highest CGPA, not less than 4.5 in each programme. This has resulted in healthy competition among the foremost scholarly students,” he said
According to the VC, the role of private universities in Nigeria cannot be overemphasised, especially at this critical period in the nation, where public universities are not able to meet up with the high demand of desirous youths yelling for university education.
“There is a huge gap that the private universities have been trying to fill and Kola Daisi University has been in the forefront of making education accessible to these teeming youths.
“Education is very critical to the development of a nation and it has been widely acclaimed that a nation cannot rise above level of the education of her citizens.
“I believe this is our little way of contributing to our nation as well as keeping up with the vision of the founder Chief Kola Daisi, which is ‘to be a world class institution for excellence in the production of graduates able to respond to the socio-economic needs of a knowledge driven economy,’” he said.
In addition to the 24 programmes currently being run by the institution, Olatunbosun noted that the university will soon host officials from the National Universities Commission (NCC) for the resources verification of another Basic Medical Sciences programmes.
He said the programmes include B. Sc. Nursing, B.Sc. Medical Laboratory Science, B. Sc. Public Health, B.Sc. Human Physiology and B. Sc. Human Anatomy, adding that they will be available before the end of the current admission exercise.
The VC said that attaining world standard in education by the university would not be compromised, stressing that the dream of the founder to develop the university to the standard comparable to renowned institutions like Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge will be assiduously worked at.
He enjoined the graduating students to be good ambassadors and a projecting light of their alma mater to the world.
Olatunbosun had earlier introduced Mr. Olawale Adetu, as the new substantive Registrar of the institution.