The Vice-Chancellor, National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Prof. Olufemi Peters, has told the leaders and people of Emevor Community in Isoko North Local Government Area of Delta State, that their vision to initiate and complete a Community Study Centre would have a long-lasting impact on their immediate community and its environs.
Peters made this assertion in Emevor during the inauguration and handing over ceremony of the permanent site of Emevor Community Study Centre by the leaders and people of the community to the management of NOUN on Thursday, August 8, 2024.
The Vice-Chancellor said "We are overwhelmed by the hospitality of the Emevor people. We thought we were coming to see a small structure. We never knew it would be a magnificent edifice such as this.
"We are grateful that you have expended much resources to design and build this edifice. Congratulations, and please congratulate yourselves.
"By our mandate, we ought to be everywhere, but not everywhere has built a structure such as this," adding that he saw in Emevor a community that was willing to deliver the future of its people into their hands.
"Even people from neighbouring communities shall benefit from this project," the VC concluded, while charging the leadership of the community to handover not just the keys, but also the titles of the property to NOUN as a testament to their wholehearted donation of the entire centre to the university.
The President-General, Isoko Development Union (IPU) Worldwide, Prof. Chris Akpotu, pledged not only to protect the study centre "with everything," but also to mobilise the illiterate and semi-illiterate in Isoko nation to take advantage of the centre to upgrade their academic status.
Similarly, the President-General, Emevor Progressive Union (EPU), Comrade Teddy Jon Edoso, in his welcome address, identified education as one of the most cherished values of the people of Emevor Kingdom.
Edoso said that it was in their quest to give effect to that aspiration that the community in 2012 applied to be part of NOUN, a request that was granted two years later in 2014, adding that the project was funded entirely by sons and daughters of Emevor Kingdom.
A former governing council member and an Emeritus Professor of NOUN, Godwin Sogolo, who chronicled the history of the study centre at the occasion said, "This is the 10th year since the establishment of the NOUN Emevor Community Study Centre and I am pleased to say that the impact has been phenomenal.
"Not only has the centre contributed immensely to the expansion of the frontiers of knowledge in and around Emevor Community, it has also helped in increasing access to quality tertiary education through the Open and Distance Learning (ODL) mode."
The event, which featured a formal inauguration of the newly -completed single storey multifunctional edifice and handover of the centre to NOUN, had all the principal officers of the university in attendance (except the University Librarian who was unavoidably absent).
The inauguration ceremony also boasted of the creme de la creme of sons and daughters of Isoko nation of Delta State, in attendance.
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