By David Nsa
Arthur Jarvis University Akpabuyo has been enlisted as a JAMB Computer Base Test center in Cross River State.
The disclosure was made in a press briefing with men of the press by the institution where it’s Vice Chancellor, Prof. Ani Nkang highlighted some progress made by the school as well as challenges.
His words, “We are now an approved center for JAMB Computer Base Test (CBT) so this institution, is one of the 13 centers in the State. We have about 275 computers that are linked for that purpose, the minimum required is 250.”
About the institution staff strength to attend to their current 700 students he said, “The staff strength presently is about 144, about 74 of them are non academic staff, and about 40 are academic staff, and then we have other supporting staff.
“For this academic year we’ve admitted close to 300, by the time we conclude admission end of this month base on the JAMB policy guideline, private universities can admit until January 31, we hope that the student population by then will be about eight hundred, presently it is about seven hundred.”
Outlining some challenges he said, “all is not rosy, as the student’s number increase and definitely the need for more infrastructures comes up. In terms of funding to meet the growth of the institution, being a private University in Nigeria, as a private university we cannot benefit from such facilities as the Education Trust Fund (ETF), the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TET FUND) we don’t have access to these funds which the Public Universities are using mostly in terms of infrastructural development and supporting research and conflict attendance. What we have has comes from the revenue we generate occasionally and the stakeholders that do come in to assist.
“Outside infrastructural development challenges, am sure while coming you saw the state of the access road to this place and of course the internal road are not too good although we try to maintain them definitely, we do hope soon that either Government will come and give us the support especially with the access road. As you drive back you will see some signs that the State Government has worked on it, on a piece of paper I believe they have worked on it.” He said.
He went further to reveal that as part of their Community Development Program (CDP) “we have a hospital that is open to the community not that it is free but it is subsidized. We came up with some arrangement with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), on the basis of that we may get some referrals from the public institutions around. Also in the contest of Community Development, we have a few students I think about three or four who are actually studying on scholarship in this University.”
When asked about the choice of NHIS rather than Ayade Care he said. “Now for the hospital (NHIS), that’s the one we chose, we have the right to choose from NHIS and Ayade Care, we hope Ayade Care will not be like this our road.”
He concluded by revealing that the institution is currently planning on supporting traditional medicine practitioners to scientifically validate their products.
The team of journalists were conducted round the first private University in Cross River State.
Some of the students that spoke to CrossRiverWatch TV in the course of the tour rated the institution high.
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