The Vice Chancellor of the University of Calabar, Professor Florence Obi has vowed to complete abandoned projects of previous administrations to cater for the institution’s growing population.
Professor Obi was speaking with newsmen shortly after inspecting the progress of remodeling work on selected abandoned projects in Calabar, the capital of Cross River State, south-south Nigeria.
The Vice Chancellor, who undertook the inspection of the remodeling of three 150 capacity auditoriums, proposed Faculty of Law and hostels, said that her decision to embark on completing the abandoned projects were to provide the growing student and staff population with befitting infrastructure.
According to her, “UNICAL is one of the universities with a lot of Nigerian Government funded abandoned projects. But, we are going to change the tide. We do not want to leave any abandon projects in the university.
“A lot of our staff are looking for office spaces. We are utilizing our meagre resources efficiently to ensure that we complete the most of the abandoned projects.”
On the remodeling of some of the projects, the 11th Vice Chancellor of the University of Calabar said that the three new lecture halls were redesigned to include staff and student convenience, relaxation areas and office spaces.
Presidential Commitment
She expressed profound gratitude to the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari for providing the resources for the reconstruction through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund.
She said, “I want to thank President Muhammadu Buhari and the Tertiary Education Trust Fund for always been there for us. We are doing these projects courtesy of the Federal Government and TETFUND.
“We are re-modelling the lecture halls to meet today’s contemporary sitting arrangements for students. Each hall has the capacity to contain 150 students.
“We are grateful that this is happening at this point in time. From the commitment from the engineers, we hope to invite TETFUND to UNICAL to inaugurate this project by next year,” she said.
Tackling COVID-19
The first female Vice Chancellor, who assumed office during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic on December 1, 2020, recalled that she had to establish an isolation on the campus, embark on massive sensitisation and distributed free face mask to staff and students as well as through its reactivated committee instituted hand washing and temperature checks.
Professor Obi said that the committee would be enabled to embark on a more aggressive enforcement across the campus and encourage vaccination against COVID.
“The COVID-19 team that we set up did very well in managing the students and staff on campus. We have to reactivate the team to effectively manage the crowd on campus,” she said.
The remodeling and construction of the selected projects would be completed and presented to the staff and students community in March 2022.
Confidence Okwuchi
