By; SADIQ ABUBAKAR, Maiduguri
Governor Babagana Umara Zulum of Borno State has donated equipment to Civil and Water Engineering Department of University of Maiduguri to meet up with the NUC accreditation, requirements which the university authorities could not meet up in the past.
The governor who is a former graduate of the department and varsity as well as senior lecturer with the department, procured twenty sets of equipment amounting to N 81 million among which are first of its kind kind in the North East.
Borno State Commissioner for Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovations, Dr. Babagana Malumbe Mustapha presented the equipment on behalf of the governor.
Malumbe while presenting the items, said that the governor procured the equipments amounting to about N81 million on the request of the University, after the department failed to pass accreditation.
“This came as a result of request from the university to the Executive Governor of Borno State, when the Department of Civil and Water Resources Engineering lost accreditation in the last exercise,” Malumbe said.
“And I can remember what his Excellency said then that we cannot afford to be in government and a department in our own faculty will lose accreditation. That’s when he immediately directed the ministry to ensure that we procure the equipments,” Malumbe said.
The commissioner also observed that the greater percentage of the university are indigenes of Borno State, stressing that one of the pillars of his administration is education and as a professor who knows the importance of education, hence the prompt support to the university.
He further explained that issues of changes in monetary exchange policy hindered the procurement of the equipment on time.
The Vice Chancellor, University of Maiduguri, Professor Aliyu Shugaba, who received the equipment, could not hide his admiration and appreciation to Governor Babagana Umara Zulum.
“On a very happy note that I stand here on behalf of the University of Maiduguri and Faculty of Engineering to receive these highly valued equipment, that are necessary for teaching and research in the whole faculty of engineering, not only civil engineering.”
He said that right from the time the accreditation results came out and it was said that the faculty had been denied accreditation, Zulum called him and asked, “is it true that department of civil and water resources engineering was denied accreditation?” I said yes. He said can we please meet.” Shugaba concluded.
He said that during their meeting, when he listed the reasons of losing the accreditation, some of which are lack of the equipment, Zulum promptly invited the commissioner and facilitated the procurement of the equipment.
Below is the list of the equipment.
1. Triaxial Testing Machine with complete accessories
2. California Bearing Ratio (CBR) with complete accessoriesS
3. High Performace Liguid Chromatography (HPLC)
4. Marshall Testing Machine
5. Direct Shear box Machine with complete accessories
6. HI-target V9o Phe Dual frequency GNSS/RTK system with complete accessories
7. Jar Testing Apparatus
8. Hitachi CP X4042 4200 lumen projector
9. Atomatic Absorption Spectroscopy (AAS) Machine
10. Centrifuge Corning LSE compact Contrifuge 1
11. Magnetic Stirrer with Hot Plate
12. Longwave Ultravoilet 365mm lamp
13. Water Treament test kits
14. Electro-thermal Soxhlet extractor with accessories
15. Laboratory loader flat trolley
16. Muffle furnace
17. Distillation machine
18. Fouries transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR)_
19. Standard Cone Penetrometer
20. Digital Compression Machiine YES-600
