By Francis Sadhere
Outgoing Vice-Chancellor of Delta State University, Abraka, (Delsu) Prof. Eric Arubay has revealed that despite inheriting a lot of debt when he came in as the VC of the university five years ago, he was now leaving a ‘robust account’ for his successor.
Prof. Arubayi who stated this while speaking with journalists at his office in Abraka added that his administration had worked tirelessly to ensure that it was leaving office without owing any debt, a feat he said, was accomplished.
According to Prof. Arubayi, his administration in the past five years had not suffered any student crisis and academic sessions have been running smoothly, noting that God has been good to him.
He said: “But more importantly, that is why we keep praising God, for the past five years we have not had any student crisis. It has been peaceful though there were challenges here and there. The only time we had closure of the university was when ASUU was on strike. Apart from that the academic sessions ran smoothly and very well.”
He said the university had never had it good before his administration, stressing that within the short period of time that he had been the VC of the institute he had achieved a lot of milestones in terms of infrastructures, students and staff welfare.
Prof. Arubayi revealed that the university which had a very low ranking among state Universities in the Country, was now ranking 4th adding that the university had also attained about 97% accreditation.
“Before now, the ranking of this university was down among state universities. But I am also very happy to inform you that it has now climbed up to 4th position among state universities and we are very happy with this latest development,” he said.
He said its pharmacy degree program which was almost scrapped has now attained full accreditation, explaining that the only programs that were yet to have full accreditation were its accounting, engineering and computer programs.
While reeling out his achievements for the past five years, Prof. Arubayi told journalists that Delsu remains the only state university that pays the lowest tuition fees in the country and that it had never increased the tuition fees for the past five years.
Prof. Arubayi rated the completion of the Faculty of Education building as one of the projects that was very close to his, stressing that as an academics he was proud that the project was completed during his tenure.
He also said that all the staff of the institute will be paid Christmas Bonus, saying it was the first time that staff will be paid bonuses at the end of the year.
On the low rate of secret cult activities in the institution, Prof. Arubyi attributed the success to the proactive stand of his administration which hit the ground running and put structures in place to nip cultism on the bud.
When asked on the total amount spent on all the projects so far, Prof. Arubayi said that the fund runs into several billions of naira and that he could not give an estimated account of how much has been spent because the funds came from different sources.
