Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike has arrived Oyo State for the 14th Convocation Ceremony of Ajayi Crowther University.
Wike was received by the Leader of PDP in the South West, Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State.
The two Governors alongside their counterpart in Lagos State, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, are to be conferred with honorary doctorate degrees by the institution on Friday, 9 December, during the grand finale of the 14th convocation of the university.
The Vice Chancellor, Prof. Abiodun Adebayo, at a press conference ahead of the convocation ceremony, said the three honorees have contributed immensely to the progress of the country, and were proud members of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), the proprietor of the school.
He said 1,547 undergraduates were admitted into first degree. Among the students, 41 would be bagged First Class Honors.
He also noted that 583 postgraduate students including 34 doctorate degree holders will be honored by the university for satisfying the university’s academic requirements laid down by the National Universities Commission (NUC).
Adebayo also stated that Victor Adetunji, one of the graduates from the law faculty also bagged the first class in the final Law School Examination while seven others got second-class upper grades.
Adebayo said the university has been working round the clock to complement the efforts of the federal and state governments to ensure food security, eradicate hunger, and deal with poverty in the country.
He said the institution had established an agro-allied company – Ajayi Crowther University (ACU) Seed Company, for the production of high yielding seeds and seedlings.
The company, he said, is the first of its kind in the history of Nigerian universities, adding that ACU is in partnership with National Agricultural Seed Council (NASC) and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) on the project.
For the umpteenth time, Adebayo also called on the Federal Government to allow private universities to draw from the various grants and subventions released by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) to aid even development across the nation’s tertiary institutions.
He also appealed to the FG to complete the Oyo-Ogbomoso section of the Ibadan-Ilorin road which is presently in a state of despair.
The VC also reeled out the management’s achievements in the last year including the construction of a block of multipurpose lecture halls, a civil engineering workshop centre, a new cafeteria at the Offa Meta campus, equipping the Medical Science and Nursing Laboratories as well as the Imaging Laboratory Complex of the Radiography and Radiation Science programme among others.