Addressing the pioneer students of State University of Medical and Applied Sciences (SUMAS) Igbo-Eno, Enugu State during the institution’s maiden matriculation ceremony, Ugwuanyi, pointed out that the challenges that numerous applicants in Enugu State face gaining admission into tertiary institutions especially for professional and competitive courses such as Medicine, Pharmacy, Allied Health Sciences, Engineering, Law, spurred his administration to establish the university.
Ugwuanyi noted that thousands of well-qualified candidates are left stranded without admission in the country bedeviled by socio-economic challenges and attendant implications.
The governor revealed that it was against the backdrop of acute shortage of health personnel in the state and across the country as well as the consequential effects of brain drain in view of the fact that the few available are unceasingly leaving the country in their numbers also encouraged his administration to establish another state-owned university with a specialised brief on professional disciplines.
Ugwuanyi went down memory lane to eulogise the first President of Nigeria and a foremost nationalist, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (The great Zik of Africa) and recalled his leadership role, patriotism and selflessness in founding the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, stressing that “the uniqueness of what Zik altruistically did for the nation and particularly for Nsukka by siting the university in Nsukka land remains a godly act, recreating Nsukka as a land and redefining the destinies of her people.
“It brought light into a place where there was darkness. It made Nsukka come into the map of the world when many Nigerian cities of today were hardly known to other Nigerians not to say Africa and beyond.”
Congratulating the pioneer students including their parents/sponsors for their landmark and historic achievement of being admitted into the brand-new university, Ugwuanyi added that his administration had invested a lot and had provided the needed infrastructure for the smooth take off of the university.
According to him: “There are six faculty buildings each with eight to 12 huge classrooms, laboratories and 36 offices. There are also two completed hostels each with 450 bed spaces (one for male and one for female), a medical centre that is well equipped to even provide tertiary medical services, the solar powered streetlights, and a teaching hospital which has reached an advanced state.
“I have also made adequate provisions to ensure that all the ongoing projects (the teaching hospital, the ICT building, the road network, the perimeter fencing and the main gate are completed. The entire university is provided with multiple numbers of industrial scale boreholes for efficient supply of water.
He, therefore, expressed optimism that with the facilities already provided and the crop of management staff chosen, the medical university will grow to be among the top universities in the country.
In his welcome address, the Vice Chancellor of SUMAS, Prof. James Chukwuma Ogbonna, expressed profound gratitude to Ugwuanyi for his vision and passion for human resource development that led to the establishment of the university.
Ogbonna hinted that the governor’s investment in the medical university would contribute in addressing the acute shortage of manpower in medical and allied health sciences.
Disclosing that the first set of 789 students had been admitted into the 23 programmes approved by the National Universities Commission (NUC), spread into six faculties, the Vice Chancellor congratulated the matriculants, their parents and guardians, urging the students to exhibit high sense of discipline and seriousness by attending lectures, studying very hard and participating in all the academic activities.
