Nigeria: Unilag Move to Make World's Top 100

In a determined effort to break into the elite top 100 universities in the world, the University of Lagos has recently held a retreat on strategic planning at Eko Tourist Beach Resort.

Conducted between Friday, October 8 and Saturday, October 10, 2010, in which vital areas of the University sectors were adequately discussed and documented, the retreat was chaired by the Deputy Vice-chancellor, Management Services, Professor Bello.

Other principal officers, eminent professors and Directors in the university who constituted the strategic planning committee were in attendance.

According to Mr. Seth Adebisi Dare, Deputy Registrar (Information), the Vice-chancellor, Professor Babatunde Sofoluwe, who spoke at the opening of the retreat, commended members of the committee for their dedication to duty.

Also speaking, Professor Bello, Chairman of the committee charged the members to work hard to ensure that the plan was at least 80% ready for the University Governing council's considerations.

Seven sub-committees were set up to work on the seven sectors of the plan which had to do with - Academic Matters, Human Resources, Health, Safety and Security Sector, Environment sector, physical infrastructure, Student Affairs, and Finance sector.

Dare disclosed that all the sub-committees made presentation of their work and others made useful contributions. One major item in the plan is the issue of ICT and that for the plan to be effective, all areas of the university sectors must be ICT driven. The plan is also designed to enable the institution be in a position to attract fund, grants from outside world.

Meanwhile, the University of Lagos is to host UNIDO/Toshiba Corporation pilot facility for training and capacity-building of stakeholders in POPs destruction and pilot remediation of contaminated sites. The facility will aid research training across the departments of Chemistry and Geosciences in the Faculty of Science and the Department of Chemical Engineering in the Faculty fo Engineering.

The demonstration and training plant is part of a project established by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) in collaboration with Geostream Corporation in Kitakyushi, Japan under the auspices of Toshiba Corporation and Konoike Construction, Japan.

The University of Lagos is the first university in Nigeria and indeed, Africa to participate in the aspect of treaty and convention implementation of the project.

A high level team of UNIDO/TOSHIBA including experts from Federal Ministry of Environment, Power Holding Corporation of Nigeria, Toshiba Corporation, Konoike Construction, Japan, led by Dr. Mohammed Eisa, visited the University and met with the vice-chancellor, Professor Babatunde Sofoluwe. A proposal for the installation and running of a state-of-art 50kg/hr Geostream Small-scale Thermal Desorption pilot plant was presented to the vice-chancellor.