PLASU: first convocation this year

The Plateau State University will graduate its first set of students before the end of the year, Governor Simon Lalong has said.

According to Lalong the graduation is coming ten years since the university was established.

The governor told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) Forum in Abuja that the university could not graduate its students all the while due to non-accreditation of the institution.

“(There has been) no accreditation, no graduation for over 10 years.

“And now, setting up a university as a speaker and now back as a governor I have no reason not to work on ensuring that the university was accredited and also there is graduation from that university.

“To date, they have done accreditation for 17 courses and ready for convocation.

“As a matter of fact, if not for little challenge in terms of funding, the first convocation, I was preparing for June this year.

“However, we are hoping that before the end of the year, they will have their first convocation. That will tell you the passion we have about education.

“For some of us, our parents were not rich and because of that, the only opportunity at that time was the public schools. We went to public schools and today, we are what we are because we went to public schools.

“So, we cannot deny people the opportunity to go to public schools.’’

Lalong said that to boost primary education, the state recruited 2,000 teachers on ad hoc basis.

He also said that through counterpart funding of the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), the schools were renovated and while infrastructure were improved.

“We realised that we don’t have the opportunity to employ now, but what we did was to approve the employment of about 2,000 teachers in primary schools.’’

He said that at the inception of his administration, insecurity and strike by workers had affected the quality of teaching and learning in schools in the state.

“On the chart, before then Plateau used to be rated very high, but at that time we were almost either last or second to the last in the federation.

“The worst part of it was that there was no relationship between labour and the government to the point where the civil servants were no longer working.

“Strike was on for about five to six months and salaries were not paid for over nine months and then teachers were owed over 11 months salaries.

“So it was like we were going to inherit a failed state.’’

He, however, said that with the engagement of teachers and payment of outstanding teachers’ salaries, the crack in the education sector was corrected and schools resumed.