Gabriel Dike
The newly-amended Act governing the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) has removed barriers hindering their graduates from participating in the National Youth Service Corp (NSYC) and the Law School.
The amended Act–National Open University (Amendment) Act, 2018, was signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari, on December 1, 2018, and has since been gazetted.
NOUN Vice Chancellor, Prof Abdalla Adamu, who disclosed this, yesterday during the 54 meeting of the Governing Council in Lagos, said amendment of the Act now empowers the management of the university to mobilise its graduates for NSYC and Law School.
Adamu said with the gazette of the amended Act, the university management would approach NYSC and the Council of Legal Education for negotiation.
‘’Initially, what was missing was negotiation with the two bodies.
“We have made contact and with the amended Act, negotiation with NYSC and Council on Legal Education will soon start,” he disclosed.
He also disclosed that NOUN would matriculate over 17, 000 students nationwide and seized the opportunity to clear the air on the status of NOUN’s admission via the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board.
Chairman of NOUN’s Governing Council, Prof essor Peter Okebukola, during the briefing hailed president Buhari for signingthe NOUN amended Act into law.
Prof. Okebukola said the amended Act will provide legitimacy to the university as a full-time open an distance learning and with a population of 516,000 students, target is to hit the one million mark in no distance future.
“With this recognition, NOUN is placed at par with all recognised universities in Nigeria, under the various Acts that amended the provision of higher education in Nigerian universities.
“This further strengthens the university to provide Open and Distance Learning opportunities to millions of Nigerians who otherwise would not have been given such opportunities in ‘closed’ universities due to one difficult circumstance or other.”