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The University of Port Harcourt (Uniport) has, in a bid to reform and in still quality in the institution cancelled the certificates of 7,254 graduates.
The University of Port Harcourt (Uniport) has, in a bid to reform and in still quality in the institution cancelled the certificates of 7,254 graduates.
The Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof. Nimi Briggs, said that "Because we want to improve quality of graduates and student intake, we deregister all those who falsified records to get into the university since 1996."
Briggs who delivered the first inaugural lecture of the National Universities Commis-sion (NUC) said the university, like others is rotten and a clean up had to be carried out.
He said after careful scrutiny, 758 graduates of the 1996 set had their certificates withdrawn, 1,952 were affected in the 1997 set, 2,254 in 1998 and 2,290 also affected in 1999.
Many of the disciplined graduates, he said, had also confessed to wrong doings, begged the university for mercy and praised the efforts to sanitise the system.
Briggs who delivered a paper entitled, "Internationalisation of Higher Education in Africa: The University of Port Harcourt as a case study'', said the universities should be qualitative and resourceful to compete internationally.
"We have set code of conduct democratically drawn for all staff and students to run the university. The code touched on resumption deadline, conduct of examination and prompt release of results, zero tolerance in malpractice,'' he said.
Briggs explained that the university had also reviewed its curricula and put in place mechanisms to monitor the activities of lecturers and students. especially in the conduct of academic activities.
The reform agenda of the university, he said, was to enable it have meaningful contribution in the international comity of universities and not to stand out as a recipient but also as a giver.
The strategies, he said, included restructuring academic activities, setting up of specialised structures to deal with extraneous issues, and international co-operation.
Briggs frowned at the current system where many African universities go into international linkages without having anything to contribute to boost such co-operation.
"We should bring out identifiable, mutually beneficial arrangements with world universities. We should have something to give in return in any cooperation,'' he said.
Briggs explained that his university had departed from the current system, paying more attention to academic and taking other issues as secondary.
He decried a situation where institutions devoted much of their time on hostel issues, cult, unionism, and municipal services at the expense of academic.