The outgoing Vice-Chancellor of Al-Hikmah University, Ilorin, Prof, Taofeek Ibrahim, on Thursday accounted for his five-year stewardship.
Ibrahim told newsmen in Ilorin that he was leaving he institution better than he met it.
He fielded questions on his tenure during a ‘News Keg programme’, organised by the Correspondents Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Kwara Council.
The don recalled that when he assumed office as vice chancellor in 2015, the university had 519 workers in the academic and low teaching cadre.
Ibrahim who said that the university has 671 academic and non-teaching staff by 2015, with about 31 per cent of lecturers who had PhD, but today the figure stands at 54 per cent.
He said that inspite of these achievements, the institution was and trying to see how much it could improve on the figure.
He said that the number of both academic and non-academic staff have increased vis-a-vis the number of lecturers with PhD.
“When I came into office as Vice Chancellor in 2015, the University had 519 workers in the academic and low teaching cadre. Presently, the university has 671 academic and non-teaching staff.
”The number has increased by over a hundred. This is not unexpected considering the magnitude of expansion that has come into the space of development of University.
”I met on ground a total number of 157 full-time lecturers in the University, now we have 169 full-time lecturers.
”When I came on board, 31 per cent of lecturers has PhD. Today, the figure stands at 54 per cent and we are trying to see as a university, how much more we can improve on this.
”Full-time professors in the university in 2015 was 9.5 per cent. It has now increased to 14.2 per cent,” the don said.
The vice chancellor said that within five years in office, he was able to increase staff and students welfare, increased personnel and programmes as well as funding.
He added that the institution was able to cater for its funding as it was solely a private university by engaging in alternative measures, through the establishment of eight additional Academic Centres, to add to the only existing one.
”There used to be only one centre in the university; Center for Research and International Cooperation, because of the need to look inward and see how to improve on our finances, we created eight more academic centres.
”One of those is the Centre for Summer Studies, which avails students the opportunity to remedy their poor performance during the academic session in the holiday period, from July to September.
”In the first year, we were able to gather N29.9 million in a space of three months, in the second year, we got N68 million and in the third year, we got N120 million.
”We also evolved the top up and conversion programme,” he said.
The professor said that the institution was able to tackle the problem of electricity by investing in solar to generate power supply and this saved the university the sum of N500,000 spent on generator in three days.
He said that the bar for the number of programmes the school offers was also raised within his administration from 99 to 155.
The Professor of Epidemiology and Disease Control added that as a way of improving staff welfare, the institution supports staff financially to obtain PhD.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Ibrahim would be replaced by Prof. Noah Yusuf, who was approved by the Governing Council on Tuesday.
