The National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) on Wednesday said it had graduated no fewer than 81,000 first degree students in the past four years.
The Vice-Chancellor of the university, Prof. Abdalla Adamu, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
He gave the breakdown of the number as 17,000 in 2017; 18,000 in 2018; 21,000 in 2019 and 25,000 in 2020.
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He said that the institution focused on undergraduate education to create a formidable undergraduate base.
“ In 2017, we graduated 17,000 students; in 2018, we had 18,000 of them; in 2019, 21,000 students graduated.
He said that the university produced 25,000 graduates in 2020.
“You can imagine these numbers of students produced annually; what if they do not have the opportunity to go to NOUN, you can imagine what will happen in this country,” he said.
Abdalla added that the institution ran over 57 programmes with 78 study centres across the federation including in the prisons now referred to as correctional centres.
According to him, the correctional centres currently have 615 inmates studying in NOUN.
He said that the inmates were studying without any form of financial commitment from them.
He told NAN that NOUN took full responsibility for the financial implication.
“Any inmate studying in any NOUN centre in Nigeria does so free; NOUN pays for the studies and we have now improved on that.
“We know that when inmates are released, it may be difficult for them to get jobs; so, such inmates would be allowed to continue his studies even up to PhD level,” he said.
The vice-chancellor said that the institution had fully established postgraduate schools – MBA, transport technology and other professional courses – which are run in conjunction with the Federal Ministry of Finance.
On the closure of the Mushin study centre in Lagos State, Adamu told NAN that Mushin centre had a legal problem as the landlord kept increasing rent which was exorbitant for the institution to bear.
He said that the increase was exploitative.
“The only way to continue paying the rent is to take it from students who are unfair.
“At the Mushin centre, we were paying an amount of money for the rental of the centre until they suddenly jacked up the money which we considered exploitation.
“It was increased on the claim that land value had increased in that area. The only way we will continue paying such an amount is to take it from students, and it is unfair to do that.
“This is the reason we moved the Mushin study centre to our centre on Victoria Island,” he said.
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