The Obafemi Awolowo University OAU, Ile-Ife, Osun State graduated no fewer than 78 first class degree holders at its 39th convocation ceremony held recently in the institution.
The Vice- Chancellor of the institution, Prof. Bamitale Omole, stated this on Thursday during the ceremony, which witnessed the conferment of 5, 249 first degrees and 3, 363 postgraduate degrees on students.
Mr. Omole while quoting from the latest Web-o-metric ranking, he affirmed that OAU ranked first in research among Nigerian universities, noting that the transparency, justice and integrity has been their watch word in the institution and will continue to be their guiding principles.
He said, “In furtherance to its claim as the number one IT university in Nigeria, OAU recently competed for and won a $2.7m Cloud Computing and Telepresence Facility. This achievement makes our university the only university in Nigeria with hi-tech facility.
“While other universities still use the iLab developed and made by MIT, OAU has developed her own iLab and this has helped us in solving some of the basic needs of experimentation.”
Omole however challenged the graduates to be steadfast and provide solutions to the challenges of life, assuring that the rigorous training by OAU will be very useful to the graduates in the nearest future.
“As graduates of Ife, we expect you to come up with innovative ideas in job creation and entrepreneurial
skills which will stand you in good stead in settling down quickly to making your marks in national development,”
The institution graduated 78 first class holders, 1,161 second class upper, 2,260 second class lower degrees and 877 third class degrees.