Stop Chasing Away Contractors, Investors, VC Warns Land Owners

By Victor Ogunje in Ado Ekiti

The Vice Chancellor of the Federal University Oye Ekiti (FUOYE), Prof. Abayomi Fasina, has expressed sadness over the alleged harassments being meted out to developers and those handling various federal government projects in the university by landowners.

Fasina said the incident had stalled the completion of some of the government projects and driven away investors, who showed interests in building structures that could have shored up FUOYE’s facilities, but for the harassment being suffered in the hands of those he described as ‘Omo Onile’.

Also, the vice chancellor disclosed that the university had secured the full accreditation for the 48 courses being offered by the institution, saying it had built confidence and patronage for admission in the university.

Speaking at a press conference held at FUOYE yesterday to mark the beginning of activities lined up for the one year anniversary of his appointment, Fasina urged the community leaders to warn those driving away contractors and developers under the facade of land ownership.

He said: “Let me appeal to land owners to stop harassing contractors working with the federal government on this campus.”

Though the matter was being handled by the police, this should not continue because it is affecting development here on campus.

“Another menace is this local vigilance group called Egbon Adugbo harassing my students by extorting money from them. This must stop. We are not going to take it lightly with them. We have told the Council of Chiefs, and the matter is being looked into.”

Fasina said through hard work, timely promotion and brilliant scouting, the university now has 74 professors and 51 associate professors, who are contributing to scholarship and giving the institution a good ranking globally.

“Some of these professors were promoted when I got there as the vice chancellor, and I have asked my lecturers to be hardworking because my vision is to promote 100 lecturers to professorial level before the expiration of my tenure.”

He added that his administration had built twelve 300-seater lecture theatres to improve teaching and learning, saying: “My target is to build 10 of these structures annually to give over 27,000 students a deserved comfort.”

In the area of contributions to agriculture and food security, the VC stated that his mission is for the university to be able to feed Ekiti State through commercial farming, clarifying that the institution had procured tractors, ploughing and harrowing machines, and other modern farm implements to achieve this.

“We are going to give the faculty of Agriculture a matching order to start mass production of food crops, and our target is to spend part of the proposed N400 million grant from the CBN on farming. The faculty has all the implements, and we expect that they can start this by feeding the university community and move to feed the state.”

Fasina stated that the university had gone fully digitalised in tackling security threats and that the institution was getting the deserved and expected results.

The Soil Scientist said the university is also mapping out strategy to build more residential buildings on campus, lamenting that only 1,400 students are currently resident on campus.