How UNIMAID defied Boko Haram, resisted attempts to close down – VC

Professor Aliyu Shugaba, Vice-chancellor of Maiduguri University (UNIMAID), has revealed how the university managed to maintain operations despite the presence of Boko Haram terrorists in Borno State.

VC stated that the resilience of the school management and the support of all safety agencies, hunters and security teams have managed to keep the campus relatively safe.

During a courtesy visit to the publishers of Image Merchants Promotions Limited, IMPR, PRNigeria and Economic Confidential in Abuja on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Shughaba said that the university’s management has made all faculty and students aware of safety measures and at the same time strengthened the surrounding fence to resist attacks by the insurgents.

The VC who is a professor of biochemistry added that even when a veterinary professor was killed by a suicide bomber in 2017, he and his administrators chose to be more proactive on safety issues rather than abandon and close the school.

He pointed out that the security situation is so tense that the Minister of Education once visited Maiduguri to close the school, but he and his staff and students resisted and chose to ignore the challenge.

“We had about 40,000 student population that time and all the roads leading out of the city had either been shut for fear of Boko Haram or taken over by Boko Haram elements.

“Even the only one working that time, the Maiduguri-Yobe-Kano road still contained a lot of Boko Haram threats.

“So where and to whom are we releasing these 40000 students if we chose to shut the school? If we did, the insurgents could have either harmed them or taken them and turned them to terrorists.

“So we decided to stay in school to protect them and continued our activities of teaching, learning and research,” the VC said.

He added that: “Right now, we have so much inculcated resistance into our students that if they hear bomb blasts, they laugh it off and call it to ring tunes.”

“We are not afraid of Boko Haram at all. We have now instituted a smooth transition process in the School in such a way that if the present VC is killed, there is an immediate successor who also has an immediate successor who will take over the mantle of leadership if he is also killed,” he noted.