Akwa Ibom State University set to join campus broadcasting with radio station launch
The Akwa Ibom State University (AKSU) has been granted licences to join in the league of higher institutions operating campus broadcasting in Nigeria, management of the 12-year-old institution has said.
Prof. Nse Essien, the Vice Chancellor, said the new AKSU Fm radio station would grace the airwaves any moment from now, and would further enhance teaching, learning and research in the institution.
Essien made the disclosure in Uyo, on Wednesday, during a familiarization visit to the state state council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists.
The Vice Chancellor who noted that the university runs post graduate programmes (PGD, MA, and Ph.D) in mass communication, added that the institution had unbundled its mass communication programme at the undergraduate level.
He said the former mass communication programme was divided into other departments namely: Departments of Public Relations, Advertising, Broadcasting, Journalism and Media Studies.
Giving a rundown of achievements recorded so far, Prof. Essien, who will be one year in office in August, said the university has 38 academic programmes with full accreditation.
“We have just moved from 38 to 42 academic programmes spanning faculties of Agriculture, Social Sciences, Management Studies, Arts, Science Engineering, and Science Education.
“For the past one year that I’ve been around, we have started three new programmes, that is Sociology and Anthropology, Department of Biochemistry, and Department of Banking and Finance.
“So, these new programmes will actually start in July when the new (2020/2021) academic session will start. We have already admitted students and they will start normal academic activities. They will be based in Obio Akpa campus”, he said.
Prof. Essien said the university, within the period of his stay in office, started postgraduate programme with about 67 academic post-graduate programmes covering PGD, MSc, MPA, MBA, and Ph.D.
He said it was the university’s definite plan to produce and mass-produce quality post-graduate students to totally suffocate the work space in Nigeria.
In the area of admissions, Essien said the university, in addition to the normal University Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME), started the Joint University Preliminary Examination Board (JUPEB), to also cater for students who took the UTME and those with five credits in the Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE).
He said: “What we do is just to train them for nine months. Thereafter, they will gain direct entry into the university.
“In order words, they will not start in year one again; they will go in as direct entry and that will enable them to enter the university system. And I think this will help a lot of our young people”.
Essien said that the university has started its part time programmes, the teaching hospital project and the medical school.
He added that the university was set up to service the educational sector of the state, as the existing federal university might not be able to effectively do so.
Essien commended Governor Udom Emmanuel for all the supports the university has enjoyed from his administration, adding that the management of the school would ensure the state benefitted from its services.
“Our university is meant to mainstream all the visions and dreams of this state in several areas.
“We are going to come up with programmes that will support our aviation industry, and programmes that will support our maritime industry which is developing in a very fast pace.
“Our job will be to provide enough manpower to drive the industrialization process which this government has already started”.
Responding, the NUJ Chairman, Comrade Amos Etuk, said the union was proud to identify with the university.
Etuk assured the Vice Chancellor and his visiting team that his office was doing well to ensure professionalism and dignity in the union.
He congratulated Prof. Essien on the new AKSU radio station, and the unbundling of the mass communication programme which he described as strategic.
