By Mercy Osajiugo
Minna – Dr Muhhammad Busa, Provost, Fati Lami Abubakar Institute for Legal and Administrative Studies has called on Niger State Government to build students’ hostels for the institution to ease its accommodation problem.
Busa made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Minna.
He said that the school had only one hostel being used by male students while female students had no hostel.
“I want to report to you that the student population have tripled; in 2015 we were only 710, now we have 1,240 students and some of the students need to be in hostel,’’ he said.
According to Busa, there are hostels under construction but work has stopped on them.
“The governor sent a team from the Ministry of Works and Housing and they did their bill of quantities,’’ he said.
The provost then urged the state government make the hostel project a priority to ease the problem of accommodation facing the teeming students.
“We have lost a lot of students seeking admission into the school simply because we do not have a female hostel.
“I still want to appeal to the governor him to assist us in the building of hostels for the teeming population of the institute,’’ the provost said.
He said that though the internally generated revenue (IGR) of the institution has shot up from N60 million to N100 million, it could not build meaningful structures because the school was saddled with other commitments.
“I want to commend Gov. Abubarka Bello for his magnanimity for agreeing that we can prudently use the resources from IGR to ensure good service delivery for the institute.
“Infrastructure, we can do that within the confine of our IGR, but structures require money and our IGR may not be able to do that.
“When I assumed office in 2016, I wrote to the governor requesting for structures in the institute; if you look around, you will see that we are really constrained in terms of structures.
“In the letter I stated that the school needed lecture theatres and lecture halls of between 500 to 1000 capacities.
“We also need two additional blocks for staff offices and we need three additional blocks of classrooms,’’ he said.
The provost said that the school has opened a campus at Borgu and would have a campus at Suleija next year.
He explained that the school had the mandate to spread the campuses to provide middle level manpower for the state and the country at large.
NAN reports that Fati Lami Abubakar Institute for Legal and Administrative Studies is affiliated to IBB University Lapai.
