Abuja – The Federal University, Lafia, Nasarawa State, was on Tuesday in Abuja formally connected to the Nigerian Research and Education Network (NgREN).
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that NgREN is the national research network for Nigeria, established to provide connectivity infrastructure and service layers for innovation in teaching and research in Nigeria.
It is aimed at harmonising knowledge within the tertiary sector, to drive productive research, collaboration and knowledge dissemination for the development of Nigeria and mankind.
NgREN, which is domiciled at the National Universities Commission (NUC), has a conference room equipped with video conferencing facilities able to communicate with other video conference centres in all member institutions.
Speaking at the event, Prof. Julius Okojie, the NUC Executive Secretary, said it was worth celebrating as NgREN had FULafia the opportunity to improve research and learning.
“It will be recalled that on the 8th July, 2014, the first phase of the NgREN was commissioned, starting with 27 older federal universities.
“This is the first step towards connecting with the over one million students and staff in these other institutions.
“In addition to bandwidth provision, FULafia now has access to high definition tele-presence capabilities for real time collaboration.’’
Okojie said that FULafia was the first among the new universities to get connected to NgREN.
According to him, any university that is unable to participate in the NgREN initiative, will lose out because government has provided the foundation for the network.
The NUC boss said that the Federal Government would fund the NgREN’s expansion under the second phase.
“However, annual subscriptions to enable institutions to tap into these huge benefits will be the responsibility of each institution.
“I, therefore, urge all the remaining institutions — public and private — as a matter of urgency, to pay up their subscriptions to guarantee the attainment of the NgREN’s objectives,’’ he said.
Responding, FULafia’s Vice Chancellor, Prof. Ekanem Braide, who spoke from Lafia via video-conferencing provided by NgREN, said that the connection was a huge boost to teaching and research in the institution.
According to her, teaching and learning in FULafia is done through Information Communication Technology (ICT) as provided by the NgREN platform.
“With NgREN, lectures are uploaded on the learning platform before the commencement of each semester.
“Each classroom has a learning management system manned by an ICT staff.
“Sale of handout is therefore, not a lucrative venture anymore; NgREN makes it possible for us to enforce a total ban on the sale of handout,’’ she said.
She further said that said that TETFund had approved the use of a part of its allocation for the purpose of connecting to NgREN.
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NAN reports that the official inauguration of FULafia’s NgREN platform was done via video conferencing by Haji Binta Dauda, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Tertiary Education and TETFund. (NAN).