Vice Chancellor of the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), Prof. Charles Igwe, said, yesterday, that lack of foreign students and staff was responsible for low ranking of nation’s universities in the global world.
    
He stated that universities in Nigeria are doing well, but have been lowly ranked globally based on impacts they have made outside their locations, including attracting international research grants.
   
The UNN has deepened research to enable it to attract grants and be ranked among the best in the world. Addressing reporters during a tour of campuses of the university in Enugu and Nsukka, he stated that his administration, which started in 2019, met 104 uncompleted projects.
   
“It became a shame on the university. One of the first things I did was to set up a committee to start counting these projects and their implications on the continued growth of the institution. Today, however, we have completed 73 of the projects and others are ongoing.”
    
Igwe stated that it is incumbent on him to leave formidable imprints, being the first product of the school to be made a vice chancellor, stressing that he has initiated a total of 257 projects so far, out of which 149 have been completed, while the remaining 108 projects are at various stages of completion. 
    
Some of the projects, which we started and completed under my administration include the re-roofing of the Faculty of Arts building, blocks A and B; completion of the Medical Centre at Nsukka campus; rehabilitation of the College of Postgraduate Studies building; remodeling of the CEDR building; hostel renovation at the Enugu campus of the university, among others.
   
“I expect that all the projects initiated by my administration will be completed before the end of my tenure. Most of them are already 90 per cent completed.
   
In pursuit of my promise to promote staff welfare, we have converted a total of 259 staff from one cadre to another. Over 170 non-teaching staff members, who have upgraded their qualifications, were converted to academic staff, while over 89 staff members, who were stagnated for years in a particular cadre, were upgraded to match their qualifications and experiences.