Rays of hope emerged from the University as the National Universities Commission Accreditation Teams were rounding off their visits to the various Colleges and Faculties of the University.
The exercise which began on Wednesday, 22nd of November, 2017 with the arrival of the Forestry and Wildlife Accreditation Team led by Professor Ioryisa Verinumbe to the College of Agricultural Sciences in Aiyetoro Campus saw the University receiving seven (07) more teams between Thursday, 23rd November to Saturday, 2nd December, 2017. The NUC Accreditation Teams included Performing Arts led by Professor Victor Dugga, Economics (Education) with Professor (Mrs.) E. C. Okeke as the Team Leader; Computer Engineering led by Professor S. O. Falaki; Mechanical Engineering had Professor O. V. Ekechukwu as the Panel Chairman. Others were Political Sciences (Education), Geography (Educations), which has as its leader Professor Oyaziwo Aluede; while Physiology and Agricultural Engineering were expected to come up soon.
Welcoming the teams at various times in his office, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ganiyu Olatunji Olatunde informed them that OOU was established in 1982 as Ogun State University and later renamed Olabisi Onabanjo University in 2001 after the first Civilian Governor of the State . “The University is a conventional multi-campus system with four campuses in the four divisions of the state” said the Vice-Chancellor. He stated further that the University has three (03) Colleges, thirteen (13) Faculties, seventy (70) departments with seventy-eight (78) programmes. According to Professor Olatunde, many programmes run by the University have full accreditation with the exception of few ones that have interim.
Olatunde informed the teams that the University had established a Quality Assurance Directorate in order to put things right and work close to perfection. He said the University had faith in the accreditation teams and himself, having participated in such assignment for NUC in the past, revealed that it was a strenuous exercise. The Vice-Chancellor thanked the various teams and assured them that they would see marked improvement since the last NUC accreditation visit.
After the exercise, the Panel Chairmen for the various programmes came back to the Vice-Chancellor’s Office to submit their Exit Reports. Many of them admitted that there were marked improvement in terms of facilities and infrastructures. They stated that the admission requirements for the programmes were perfect while the academic regulations were well stated in the students’ handbooks.
Panel Chairmen at different times informed the Vice-Chancellor that they observed that course evaluation of the Departments were generally good because of the presence of comprehensive marking schemes.
On Library facilities, the University was commended by all the teams. They noted that most of the journals in the faculties and departments visited were very current and that the e-library was functional and was up-to-date in its subscriptions. They were also impressed with the speed and connectivity of the internet service.
However, it was not all smiles as a few of the Panel Chairmen observed some shortcomings in the area of staffing, record keeping and adherence to NUC’s basic minimum benchmark in some very few departments. They also emphasized on the need to provide adequate furniture for junior lecturers and need to recruit more hands in the technical and administrative cadres for a department or two.
In his response, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ganiyu Olatunde said that all the observations and defects noticed by the various teams would be corrected in no distant future. He revealed that efforts were ongoing to ensure that more staff offices were furnished. He also revealed that his administration was working very hard to recruit more Ph.D holders. The Vice-Chancellor thanked the teams for their comprehensive assessment of the programmes.
By: NIYI ODUWOLE
