By Ogunseye Odunayo
According to a news report by The Nation newspaper, the Minister of State Education, Emeka Nwajiuba, said Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the sum of #190.5m naira for the purchase of a new microscope for the University of Ibadan, during the weekly cabinet meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday, March 10th.
It is necessary to purchase a new microscope for the famous institution since the first and only microscope which was given to the institution by the Japanese Government on 1967 has become obsolete, Nwajiuba explained.
He also stated that the purchase of the microscope will save the government from sending money from sponsoring researches outside the country due to non availability of equipment in Nigeria.
It should be noted that the Council granted the request of University of Ibadan to acquire a microscope which is totally directed at looking at nuclear composition of molecular nature in order to put effort into revitalizing the education sector.
In addition, the request was granted when the Federal Government had the opportunity to assess and review requests from university authorities, including Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in which the replacement of such equipment falls into the support of what the NEEDS assessment report asked them to do.
“So, the request by the University of Ibadan has been approved so that we can stop spending the kind of money we spend sending PhD and further research students abroad on the basis of the lack of this particular equipment. So, the government is looking at this proactively in the sense that it will stem the amount of money we send abroad, and how much time our people spend.
“If University of Ibadan is empowered to do this, and acquires this equipment, it will become the fulcrum for many other research faculties around the country since we will now have this Institute in the country”
“Everybody will be able to access it, including those from neighbouring West African countries. Our experience while at TETFUND showed that many of the research requests had to do with the non-availability of particular targeted equipment in the country and the federal government in his holistic attempt to address both its economic and social values as well as upgrade our educational targets, then approves this to be able to address all that,” he added.
