College of Education (COED) Ilorin, Kwara State will on Thursday begin its convocation ceremony slated to hold from 27th to 31st of January, 2019.
This is coming two decades after the last convocation ceremony was held at the institution.
The Provost of the school, Dr Abdulkareem Yusuf disclosed this while receiving in audience executive members of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Kwara State council on Thursday.
According to him, past and immediate graduates of the college will be captured in the combined convocation ceremony billed to hold next year.
Yusuf stated that the 5-day event will serve as avenue for the college to showcase its various achievements, adding that the ceremony will make the institution ‘more visible.’
The provost noted that the college has recorded numerous achievements within the past few months, which has gone unnoticed by the public, calling for media support in achieving this end.
“We are trying to make things work with the little resources available. The college has a record of achievements made within a short period of time, which we hope to showcase during the convocation.
” With this, we will be making ourselves visible and people who want to assist us will be able to see what we are doing,” he added.
Reeling out the achievements made so far, the provost who is barely seven months in office, said the manual computation of students’ result has been eliminated.
“Results are now uploaded on our website to reduce result falsification and fake results. Our lecturers have been trained on how to do this and we hope to raise this to the next level when our ICT is fully developed,” he further said.
The college boss, added that the institution has embarked on renovation of hostels through Private Public Partnership (PPP), towards ensuring welfare of the students.
He listed other achievements to include the water production project, improved academic standard and students’ discipline among others.
On proposed projects, the college boss said the school has concluded plans to establish bakery and brick making industry to improve students’ entrepreneurship and boost revenue.
He stated that the management has been making concerted efforts towards making the school self reliant and be less dependent on government.
Speaking on challenges, Yusuf appealed to the state government for the timely release of monthly subvention to the institution, saying that the school was yet to receive September allocation.
However, the provost called for declaration of state of emergency on the state’s education sector, stressing the need for total overhauling.
“What we need is total overhauling, re-engineering not cosmetics but fundamental reform to make the sector self sustaining, ” he stressed.
Earlier, the state Chairman of NUJ, Mallam Umar Abdulwahab had commended management of the institution for the feat achieved so far towards taking the institution to a higher pedestal.
He urged the Yusuf led management not to rest on its oars at reposition the institutions that train potential teachers.
