“Slow how you Award First Class to Students, only 55 out of 6,257 students bagged first class in my school,” VC tells other schools

The vice-chancellor of Olabisi Onabanjo University, OOU, has advised universities to slow down how they award first-class degrees to students, adding that only 55 out of 6,257 students bagged such degree in his school.

Prof. Ganiyu Olatunde, the OOU VC, said this while briefing the press on activities lined up for the 30th convocation ceremony of the institution.

According to him, graduates should be able to defend the certificates and degrees held by them.

“A situation where you have a university graduating a few hundreds of students and among them, over one hundred bag first-class degrees leaves room for probing questions. No one is saying that students who deserve first-class degrees should not be given. Hard work, dedication and commitment should be rewarded.

“However, the manner some universities go about placing students in that category should be checked. We are graduating 6,257 and only 55 are in the first-class category. We are very sure of our products and they can defend whatever certificate and degree they possess,” he stated.

Giving a breakdown of the graduating students who are from the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 sessions, Olatunde said 991 are in the second class upper category, 2,738 in the second class lower level, 1,925 in the third class category, 217, pass category and 135 in the unclassified category.

He also noted that research was not neglected, and cited the anti-COVID syrup developed in the university

“The syrup has been found to be very effective and we took it to the National Agency for Foods and Drugs Administration and Control, NAFDAC, for the necessary scrutiny. Operational issues are the factors delaying a final decision on it,” he explained.

The VC also debunked the insinuation that the university was involved in illegal admissions

“I have been to JAMB office in. Abuja and what happened was that some processes were not completed and we have done that. We have always abide by the rules and regulations guiding admission procedures in our university,” he said.

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