The Rector, Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo, Ondo state, Mr. Gani Ogundahunsi has expressed his readiness to meet the mandate of the institution by encouraging the spirit of excellence in teaching, research, scholarship and creative activities among staff and students of the institution.
Mr. Ogundahunsi stated this on Wednesday while speaking with journalists in Owo, at the campus of the institution.
According to him, the state-owned tertiary institution has experienced tremendous progress in line with the dreams of the Visitor of the institution who gave the Council a mandate to retool, reposition and re-engineer the institution.
Based on this, Ogundahunsi therefore promised to meet the mandate by not compromise in any manner.
His words, “My vision is to meet the mandate of the school in training high quality professional and technical manpower necessary for the rapid economic and technological transformation of the state in particular and Nigeria as a whole.
“The staff school, previous management had been making efforts to reposition, to readdress the problem of that school but they could not come up with solution. I wouldn’t know whether is the lack of courage.
“But when I came on board, the council told me that the school must be privatized and that pronouncement is a law and in doing this I put on human face I had to quickly run back to the council that this could not possible. In which I had to seek for the council approval that there is need for restructuring and I started doing something.
“When we restructured the school, I thought of so many thing that we could do, I made so many efforts by following the directive of the council which led to the termination of the appointments of some workers .And the government in her magnanimity decided to reabsorb them into the civil service.
“So whoever has not gone to the office of Establishment in the state to register and be reabsorbed into the government civil service will lose that opportunity. So the best thing we can do is to reposition and rebrand the institution.
“I came on board Sept 18, 2018 as Acting Rector before I became substantive Rector on October 8, 2019 and to the Glory of God we have been able to maintain peace and we have done so much within the last one year. When I came in, 32 programmes were fully accredited.
“We have been able to regularize our academics calendar, we have been able to renovated and put into shape our ICT centre, we have HUAWEI ICT academy centre, to train both staff and students on computer networking. We have been able to bring into completion many abandoned projects”.
Ogundahunsi also disclosed that the institution is now working in tandem with a notable university to start a degree programmes saying that this would eliminated the problem of no enrollment.
Speaking on the welfarism of the workforce, the Rector said, “we don’t joke with the welfare of our staff, and I have to commend them for their support and understanding”.
While reiterated his readiness to deal with anybody go against the institution’s rules on selling handout to students, the Rector said, “in this school, discipline is the key. No selling of handout, if I caught anybody selling handout, such will be seriously face the disciplinary measure. We are to mentor and monitor students not to torment them”.
