The newly appointed Vice-Chancellor of Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko (AAUA), Ondo State, Professor Femi Mimiko, has pledged his commitment to the rapid transformation of the 10-year old university.

He decried a situation in which Nigerian universities continued to be poorly rated in the global university community, and expressed his desire to deepen the integrity of his university's academic programmes with a view to producing globally competitive graduates capable of holding their own anywhere in the world.

Mimiko made the pledge when he paid a courtesy call on the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Professor Julius Okogie, in his office in Abuja.

Responding, Okogie congratulated the VC, noting that as a former Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Acting Vice-Chancellor of the university, Mimiko had no excuse to fail in his current assignment.

He enjoined him to be focused, clearly define his mission and be firm in his resolve in administering the university and called on the proprietors of State Universities to demonstrate greater commitment to university education by boosting budgetary allocation to the sector. According to him state universities were established to contribute meaningfully to the production of competent manpower for the nation's economy.

Meanwhile, NUC and a group of Nigerians in Diaspora are proposing to establish a private university that would focus solely on the training of medical personnel.
The cost implication for the institution to be named American University of Medical Sciences is put at $650 million, while the institution, according to the promoter of the ideal, Ifeanyi Obiako, is also to cover both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

NUC, Executive Secretary disclosed this in Abuja while receiving members of the planning committee for the proposed institution led by Professor Nimi Briggs.
He said government was encouraging the establishment of specialised private institutions to tackle the dearth of highly trained personnel in some profession, stating that the cost of sending some key personnel for training abroad was becoming unbearable for the government.

"We have discovered that merely sending our personnel overseas for specialised form of training has become a problem for us. That is mainly the reason government is trying to woo Nigerian professionals abroad to come home and replicate it here."

By Fabian Ozor and Innocent Oweh