University of Ilorin breaks into African top 20 and world 2000

The Vice-Chancellor the University of Ilorin (UNILORIN), Prof. Abdul-Ganiyu Ambali, has announced that for the first time in history, a Nigerian university was ranked 20th in Africa and 1,842nd in the world.“

I am happy to restate that a remarkable thing happened to the Nigerian university system this year, courtesy of UNILORIN.

“For the first time since ranking began, a Nigerian university was ranked among the best 2,000 universities in the world”, he said.

The professor of veterinary medicine, who spoke with reporters in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, on the institution’s 30th convocation lecture, said the latest ranking of international colleges and universities placed the university first in Nigeria, 20th in Africa and the 1,842nd in the world.

Continuing he said, “Though we are not satisfied to occupy the position we are on the global stage until we are ranked within the best 200, the achievement of the university will be underscored when it is realised that 11,307 colleges and universities are sampled in the ranking in 200 countries.

“The United States alone, not to talk of other advanced countries, has much more that 3,000 universities.

“The modest work being done at the university has made it the darling of admission applicants in Nigeria; the university was the eighth most preferred in 2011 and fifth most preferred in 2012.

“Last year, we became the 2nd most preferred university in Nigeria and this year we became the number one choice of applicants with over 105,000 applicants, the second most preferred university having 74,000 applicants.”

On his achievements, Ambali disclosed that: “We have embarked on 10,000 hectares of oil palm plantation. We all know that the Malaysian economy relies much on oil palm and there is a report that they took the seed from Nigeria a few decades ago.

“However, our country imports about 500,000 metric tonnes of palm oil annually while Malaysia exported about 24 trillion metric tonnes of palm oil in 2012 to the United States, the European Union, China and India.

“The export earned the country some 20 billion pound sterling (about N5.314 trillion).”

The VC put the number of graduating students at 6,328, with 5,438 getting first degrees and 890 higher degrees/diploma.

He said: “In the first degree category, 48 made first class; 1,290 second class upper; 2,814 second class lower; 1,067 third class; 84 pass; 18 diplomas and 217 MBBS.”

-radr.ng