Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State has said that the proposed state university will have its campuses spread across all the geopolitical zones of the state.
The governor made this disclosure while fielding questions from the people of Saki West, Saki East and Atisbo Local Government Areas of the state during a Town Hall Meeting held at the Saki Parapo Town Hall, Saki on Tuesday.
Ajimobi, who was reacting to requests by people of the area for a higher institution, which they said had been lacking in the zone, said that establishing a tertiary institution was capital intensive such that it would take nothing less than N5 billion.
“Because we could not afford to put down such a huge sum of money, that is why we decided to convert The Polytechnic, Ibadan to a university, using the existing structure so that we can save some money,” he explained.
Although the governor said that the headquarters of the university would be in Ibadan, the state capital, he, however, said that the institution would be multi-campus in nature and that each of the geopolitical zones – Oyo, Ogbomoso, Ibarapa and Oke-Ogun – would have a campus based on its areas of comparative advantage.
“The in-thing now is for a university to have a base somewhere and have campuses spread across other areas, with the institution’s colleges located in areas where they have comparative advantage. This is what we plan to do concerning the state technical university we are proposing to establish,” he said.
Ajimobi turned down the request for a full-fledged polytechnic in the area, saying that polytechnic education was no longer fashionable in the world, thus making most polytechnic graduates to be treated with disdain by employers of labour because of their seeming disadvantage.
He said that his administration had commenced moves to resuscitate the moribund Oyo State Agricultural Development Programme, which has its headquarters in Saki.
The governor also said that discussions had reached an advanced stage with the Federal Government on how to make the Ikere George Dam functional so that it could be providing water for drinking, electricity and irrigation to the people of the area.
Ajimobi assured the people of the area that before the end of his tenure, the Okerete Trans-border Market would commence, stressing that when it eventually comes on stream, it would change the landscape of the entire Oke-Ogun zone as it would be the largest trans-border market in West Africa, while providing thousands of jobs for the people.
He promised that more empowerment programmes would be arranged for women so that they too could stand on their own and be financially buoyant.
The governor, who had earlier commissioned some projects in all the three local government areas, also received hundreds of decampees from other political parties to the Action Congress of Nigeria.