By joshua 
By Abu Micheal
The Vice Chancellor of the Federal University Lokoja, Prof Olayemi Akinwumi, has said the institution is committed to the highest standard of education, noting that the university will soon rank among the best 10 in sub-Sahara Africa.
Prof Akinwumi said there were lots of physical transformations and academic improvements recorded within his less than nine months in office which he said is already having a positive impact on the staff and students
The VC made this disclosure on Saturday in Lokoja, at the Felele permanent site of the institution, during the fifth convocation ceremony for the award of Bachelor degrees to students and honourary degrees to eminent personalities in the country.
The vice chancellor said his vision will be hampered if there is paucity of funds and lack of adequate manpower, as he made an appeal to President Muhammadu Buhari to lift the embargo on employment at learning institutions across the country.
Prof Akinwumi stated that the university was in dire need of manpower following the expansion of the institution to its permanent site and the creation of additional new courses, which have made the current numbers of teaching and non teaching staff grossly inadequate.
‘The university is in dire need of manpower in academic and non teaching. To meet up this manpower of the university, we look forward to securing approval to recruit into our new Faculties and departments and meeting other special needs of existing programmes.
‘We urge His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, to salvage our plight and lift the embargo on employment so that the university can aggressively recruit its manpower needs,’ the VC stated.
He noted that academic staff of the university are being considered for the award of Foreign Study Fellowships to pursue Master and PhD programmes in their respective fields through TETFund intervention.
He also said some academic staff are also being considered for the award of Local Study Fellowships to pursue their PhD Programmes and Master Degrees through TETFund.
Prof Akinwumi stated that the university’s management was striving to increase and improve on the existing facilities and to equally lay emphasis on staff training and development so that the institution would be able to cope with the increasing number of students.
‘As a result of the recent embargo on conference sponsorship by TETFund, we have not been able to sponsor anyone to attend any conference since my assumption of duty in February, 202L
‘The university library is the hub of research in the university. The library was in a state of decadence with low book collections at the time I assumed office in February 2021. The situation of the university library was so precarious that management declared a state of emergency.
‘I am happy to announce that management has taken drastic measure to restore the utility value of the library. We have commenced the process of re-stocking collections and book titles in conjunction with the end-users.
‘We are determined to equip the library of the university with up-to-date resource materials to enable it to perform its resource repository role in the community of scholars.
‘The library is equally open to those who are neither staff nor students, provided they would abide by our rules and regulations. The Bindery section of the library is being re-organised to cope with the reality of the moment using updated book mending and bindery services. It is the intention of the management to expand bindery services for revenue generation in the university,’ he stated.