Category: Campus Life

From Oyeronke Clarion

 

Students of Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko (AAUA) will on Saturday go to the polls to elect their union leaders.

The election was postponed in October 12, due to some hitches.

The Students Union Electoral Committee (SUELCO) Chairman Dr Stephen Aina, told CAMPUSLIFE that machinery had been put in place to ensure that hackers are dealt with.

He said only students who had paid their tuition could vote, adding that they should go to the polling booths with their ID cards.

Stephen said the new procedure was to forestall a re-occurrence of the hacking into the student election e-portal last year, which made it impossible for students to access the portal.

Aside that, the new procedure would guarantee a free and fair election, Aina promised, adding that it would also ensure the election outcome is not compromised.

He said: “When the election was initially held, it was a very serious issue as we discovered that the entire site was hacked to the extent that students didn’t even have network anywhere to vote. That has not happened before because we had already test run the site and it worked effectively.

Read Also: AAUA introduces ‘Students empowerment scheme’

 

“Unfortunately, hackers gained access to the site, accessed the students ID and voted for their desired candidates. The site became so porous that it was vulnerable to abuse and manipulation. This prompted SUEC to shift the election and then we looked for appropriate time in which we could reschedule our own plans to have a better one.”

Ainaexplained that SUEC adopted the e-voting sustem, vowing that it would be internally controlled to ensure its sanctity.

On how to vote, he said: “Qualified students shall be given a PIN to login Immediately, the PIN and the identity of the aspirants will come up from the beginning to the end and  they will be able to vote for the candidate of their choice.Thereafter, you click ‘submit’ button and go,” he added.

“Every financial student of this institution is eligible to vote. What to do is to screen voters with their ID card as students of this university.

The election time will come up between 9am and 4pm because we want all the students to be in the school premises. We are not taking any external voting this time around because we want a credible election that would be acceptable by all.”

 Sam Ibok and Lucky Wonte

 

NATIONAL President, University of Uyo Alumni Association, Onofiok Luke, has promised better days for  former students of the university.

Onofiok made the pledge during a special congress of the alumni, which held at the 1000-seater capacity Conference Hall at UNIUYO permanent site.

The congress came barely a few weeks after Onofiok took over the reins of leadership of the body. He called on former students to partner him to reposition the association. He emphasised the need to chart a new course for their alma mater and ensure a revival of her lost glory.

“Today, I stand tall knowing full well that you are ready and willing to partner my administration for a reconciled, repositioned and refreshed UNIUYO Alumni Association.

“It is time we rolled up our sleeves, get into the muddy gutter to clear the debris that has been in the wheel of progress of our great alma matter. There can be no better time than now to be part of this association,” he said.

Luke reiterated the resolve of his administration to run an open-door administration with probity, transparency, accountability and humanity.

“As a team, we will run an inclusive, accountable and transparent alumni association which shall ensure all matters are conducted in line with popular will and utmost probity. We will also ensure that all the lofty ideas and initiatives left by preceding administrations for the benefit of the alumni and our alma mater. Feel free to contact us with useful input and programmes that will benefit all of us. Together, let us build a UNIUYO of our dream. God bless us all.”

A few weeks ago, UNIUYO Alumni Association  elected a new leadership which produced Onofiok.

Roland Bayode, Deborah Omoare and Racheal Daramola

 

THE leadership of Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko (AAUA),  Ondo State  has unveiled a scheme on alleviating the hardship of her students.

This was made known to CAMPUSLIFE during an interview with the university’s Head of Counselling Unit Mr Mapayi Victor.

According to him, the scheme would target three categories of students – the indigents, indigenes and physically challenged.

He said: “The first category is for the physically challenged students while the second category is based on merit, as students who are on four points above or the best student from each department. The third category is for the indigent students. These are the categories we work with. Also those who are not buoyant to pay their institution fees and do not fall under any of the mentioned categories can also request for loans which has also be programmed by the management.”

Mapayi said interested student across the three categories could to visit the university website and fill a form online.

“There is a website where you visit to fill the form and after filling, you print it out. Students can also visit the site to get information and scholarships offered by the school.”

Further, Mapayi noted that management had set up a committee that oversees the scholarship programme.

He berated students for exhibiting impatience in going through a rare piece of information such as scholarship scheme.

He, therefore, urged the students to pay attention to highlights and information on notice boards.

“The link to the site is well written at the front door in the counseling unit but students don’t pay attention to what is important.

“The only thing that interest most students is night clubs which shouldn’t be. They ignore programmes that have to do with their future. They hardly pay attention to them,” he said.

Zainab Abdullahi and Kekere-Ekun Muhammad

 

HEAD of Department (HoD) of Mass Communication of the Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University Lapai (IBBUL), Niger State, Dr Ternenge Ende,  has urged campus journalists and student-writers to adhere to the ethics of journalism.

Ende said doing so would safeguard their reputation, and ensure they don’t face threats and other job hazards.

He called on them to ensure they first seek facts, investigate same thoroughly, before they publish stories.

Ende spoke at a workshop organised by the National Union of Campus Journalists (NUCJ), Northcentral zone, IBBUL.

The don, who said campus journalists are not immuned to professional hazards like their senior colleagues in the mainstream, advised practitioners to remain focused, hardworking, and committed even in the face of threats and victimisation from authorities.

He maintained that amid the criticisms of some reports done by student-writers and journalists, they have also helped to set agenda for school authorities, fight against oppressive government’s policies, helped to expose some negative ills on campuses, and restore sanity in the tertiary education system.

Further, Ende noted that campus journalism has helped to fight and reclaim students’ rights, while also improving the academic standards and infrastructural facilities in many tertiary institutions nationwide.

While enlightening the students on how to write a good pitch, Ende, urged them to always seek facts and clarifications, in order to write accurate, reliable, factual and credible news stories.

Meanwhile, the President, National Union of Campus Journalists, Comrade Ibrahim Adeyemi, has condemned molestation and harassment of campus journalists across Nigeria.

In a statement, Adeyemi blamed the authorities for depriving journalists of their rights and obligations.

The statement explained how journalists and media houses were intimidated by the government. The association also lamented how the nation’s corrupt system is tarnishing the future of journalism by impeding investigative journalism.

“The maltreatment/molestation has made the mainstream journalists not being able to do their jobs. It is also terrifying the mind of campus journalists who are now scared of being harassed or detained  by government for investigating issues that border  with the government as the result of serial detention and torture of the journalists,’’the statement added.

Fasilat Olawuyi

 

AN Ogun State Magistrate Court, sitting in Isabo Abeokuta, has adjourned the trial of Ayoola Babalola, a CAMPUSLIFE correspondent of Gateway Polytechnic, Saapade, Ogun State, till 24th of this month.

Ayoola, a Mass Communication  graduate of the institution, is facing trial for allegedly writing articles against President Muhammadu Buhari and the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress(APC),  Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Ayoola is facing a six-count charge of incitement, conduct likely to cause breach of peace, conspiracy, unlawful assembly, threatened violence and unlawful possession.

The Magistrate, Olanrewaju Onagoruwa had earlier granted him bail of N150,000 with one surety in like sum after he pleaded not guilty to the charge.

Ayoola had since been released having perfected his bail.

At the resumed hearing of the case on Wednesday last week, the Magistrate Olanrewaju Onagoruwa disclosed that the Attorney-General would take over the case.

Onagoruwa ordered the Department of State Security (DSS) to release the defendant’s phone and laptop in their custody to him.

Earlier, the Prosecution Counsel, E. O. Zamba, had told the court that the defendant published an inciting statement on his facebook page on Friday, January 17, about 1:15pm within the Gateway ICT Polytechnic Saapade in the Remo North Local Government Area of Ogun State.

He said the published document by the defendant caused fear among students and disturbed the peace of the institution.

Zamba also noted that the defendant unlawfully assembled others, now at large, to engage in riot.

He claimed that the defendant also threatened violence through publication on social media against the management of the polytechnic.

The offence, according to him, is contrary to and punishable under Sections 59,69,70,86,88 and Section 516 of the Criminal Code laws of Ogun State.

Meanwhile, a human right lawyer and counsel to Ayoola Inibehe Effiong, has accused DSS of using thugs to abduct his client before he was taken to their office.

Effiong stated this to reporters in Abeokuta.

He noted that Ayoola was initially picked up by unknown cultists who tortured him as well as seized his phones and laptop.

“What is even more annoying is that the DSS used thugs to abduct him, took him to his house, then the campus before they came to DSS office.

“The DSS didn’t initially arrest him; it was some unknown cultists that picked him up. They tortured him while he was in their custody. They seized his phone and laptop.

The lawyer also claimed that Ayoola’s interrogation while in custody has nothing to do with the charge against him.

Effiong said SSS were asking him something about Soyele Sowore (an activist and presidential candidate of African Action Congress) who is facing trial on alleged treason) while he wrote something against the rulling SAction Congress of Nigeria.

“They were asking him something with Sowore while he wrote something against President Buhari and so on. The charge on count four and count six goes to show, particularly that they are trumped up charges.”

Effiong said the government is paranoid having failed to deliver their promises to Nigerians and as such, retort to harrassing people who demand good governance.

“As far as am concerned, I don’t think they are really interested in the case because he (Babalola) has been a student activist of the polytechnic. I understand that he was even a former president of his department, Mass Communication.

“He had just graduated. I know he has had issues between the management regarding his activism on campus,’’ he said.

 

 Praise Olowe

 

JOSEPH Ayo Babalola University (JABU), has conferred honorary doctorates on Osun State Governor  Mr Gboyega Oyetola and his counterpart in Oyo State Seyi Makinde at the university’s 10th convocation.

JABU, Vice Chancellor Prof Kola Sonaike, stated that the awardees were well-deserving of the degrees.

In his words,: “The recipients have actively engaged themselves in the pursuit of service for the global community and humanity”.

Other notable personalities decorated are: Speaker, House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila; Speaker, Lagos State House of Assembly, Mudashiru Obasa; Managing Director, Bovas Company Limited, Mrs Victoria Samson; and Chairman, Chemstar Group of Companies, Lagos, Mr Emmanuel Aderemi Awode.

Oyetola, who spoke on behalf of the awardees, described the honour as ‘worthwhile’ and ‘modest’.

Meanwhile, 19 students of the university were conferred with first class honours at the ceremony.

Five hundred and one students were given first degree certificates across the institution’s 23 undergraduate programmes, while 27 students were awarded postgraduate certificates.

The graduands are 19 in the first-class honours, 175 second class (upper division); 225 second class (lower division) and 82 on third class. Another category of 27 students were awarded postgraduate certificates.  Seven of them have postgraduate diploma certificates, while the remaining 20 were awarded masters degree

Odekunle Ayisat Lolade and Ajifowo

 

THE Nigerian Association for Young Adults of Canada (NAYA-CANADA) is optimistic that a new Nigeria is possible only if her youths can take back their future through sound education and ability to think outside the box.

The association believes that despite seeming failure across all facets, the youth is that very constituency that will get Nigeria out of the woods if they could identify the need for change and ability to effect it.

NAYA President Mr Shola Agboola addressed youths during the yearly orientation of the Esa Oke Students Association.

Agboola spoke on the topic ‘Leadership and motivation: Ways to become a guaranteed student’ at Esa Oke Town Hall in Osun State.

Agboola, who was represented at the event by MD/CEO Relevance Global Construction,Bamidele Osuolale, supports youths graduating with outstanding results; nevertheless such academic feat must be matched with transforming the knowledge into lifelong values.

“So, while you are in school, focus on your studies to obtain those good grades. However, make sure you do not forget to take advantage of every opportunity of learning that is available outside the classroom. This is your time to lay the foundation of the roles you will be playing in the society later in life.

“Participate in extra-curricular activities on campus, be involved in the students-oriented bodies, and get involved in the school press corps. Be active at departmental organisations and many other activities that could afford you the opportunity to develop great leadership skills while in school.”

Agboola traced many societal ills to poverty, poor healthcare, insecurity, increased crime rate, declining standard of education, and leadership failure.  However,believed that desperation, especially by youths to seek greener pasture beyond the shore of Nigeria, might not be the solution to the aforementioned.

Though many Nigerians ‘flogged’ by poverty would not subscribe to such his submission; yet the youths, if willing, could still repossess that future they desire, if by concert, they can challenge the staus quo, Agboola said.

He continued: ”My conviction is that if we all rise up as students and as youths, we can change the narratives of this nation. Better opportunities are possible here in Nigeria and that is why those of us in Diaspora are making every effort to do our part in making Nigeria better so we can come back home.

“Nigeria is going to be great again because it is not the passion of the people in making a difference that is absent, especially among youths; it is the opportunity to transform that passion that is unavailable. While our leaders must learn how to provide opportunities for the youth to become better leaders tomorrow, you must also challenge yourself to engage in learning activities that will prepare you for that leadership role tomorrow.”

He said NAYA, which has made over $46 million investment in Nigeria cutting across health, education, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), and empowerment of female gender development,  is doing so not because members of the organisation are rich; but because they need to replicate at the home front that life of comfort the  government of Canada  offers them.

“But yet, when we visit (Nigeria), we see the condition upon which our people live. We see the frustrations in people’s eyes. We see the desperation, pains and agony in our young graduates without jobs. We see the elderly people, the nursing mothers, women and children who are sick but without adequate medical attention. We know we had to do something, this is our motivation. What is your motivation?”

“I feel very deeply about this country. I am concerned about a positive change in Nigeria and I believe that we all have a role to play. That alone should motivate you to aspire to leadership roles. That alone should make you to be very serious with your studies and encourage you to be involved in all positive endeavours that would prepare you for a better future.

“I say this because in our lifetime, we want to see a functional society where the roads are good, power is stable, water is constant, education standard is excellent, poverty is low and young people are optimistic about their future. We have seen and lived this life in Canada and I wish the same for my country – Nigeria. Our leaders have enormous responsibility before them and we should join hands to make Nigeria great,” Agboola concluded.

Agbo Agbo

 

SEQUEL to last week’s article, there must be something about critical thinking to have made George Soros to part with a whopping US$1 billion. I attended university during the heat of the ideological battle between capitalism and communism; thus it was quite usual to have Marxist and Bourgeois scholars. Understandably, the military authorities took a particular interest in what goes on in the universities. One of them was quoted at a time saying: “we abhor undue radicalism.” It is against this background that I want to continue this conversation on critical thinking.

There are two broad schools of thought regarding critical thinking: the critical thinking skills movement and the critical pedagogy movement. The aim of the critical thinking movement was to put formal and informal logic at the service of pursuing clear and dispassionate thinking.

On the other hand, the critical pedagogy movement (CPM) begins from a very different starting point. The first-wave theorists took the adjective “critical” to mean “criticism,” that is, pointing out weaknesses with a view to correcting some claim or argument. Their aim was putting logic at the service of clear thinking.

The critical pedagogues, by contrast, took “critical” to mean “critique,” that is, identifying other dimensions of meaning that might be missing or concealed behind some claim or argument. Their aim puts logic at the service of transforming undemocratic societies and inequitable power structures. Their aim is not simply educating for critical thinking, but educating for radical pedagogy – some Marxist scholars fall within this school of thought.

They see the critical person as a reactionary against the ideological hegemony of capitalism; a hegemony which foists conditions favourable to the maintenance of the capitalist system onto unwitting members of society. They see advertising, for example, as encouraging and fostering increased material consumption whilst simultaneously reinforcing the myth that large corporations are there to serve their customers, when they are, in fact, serving their own interests, and maximising profit, often at the expense of both customers and the overall social good.

The critical pedagogy movement sees tertiary education, as it stands, as part of the entrenched capitalist ideology that reinforces and legitimises these social conditions. This, according to them occurs in a number of ways, most obviously in “the banking concept of education” in which education becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories, and the teacher is the depositor. On this account, the student is assumed to be both ignorant and a supplicant. It can also be seen in the emphasis of tertiary education in producing – not intellectually-challenged – but vocationally-trained workers readymade for a capitalist social system; that is., pliable minions conforming to social expectations and meeting socio-political ends.

It can also be seen in the direction taken by the “corporate” university of the twenty-first century in viewing education as a marketable “product” and seeing students as “consumers” or “clients.” The emphasis on “accountability” and renewed emphasis on testing in the contemporary tertiary education can also be viewed as a feature of a consumer-driven model of the modern university structure. They disparagingly describe this as a commoditised educational system where there are exchange between universities and their “customers” that result in a failure of tertiary institutions to provide real intellectual challenges to students in a way which erodes institutional educational integrity.

The critical pedagogues are stridently opposed to such moves, and see critical thinking as a means of reacting to this direction in tertiary education. They believe that the aim of education should, instead, be about turning students against the idea of being trained for the economic needs of large corporations. This can be achieved by making students and their teachers more reactionary to create “critical intellectuals.”

This attitude toward the corporate university, that is, its serving an entrenched capitalist, socio-political agenda was tested in 2012 in the USA. There was strident opposition to the teaching of critical thinking skills, and any other higher order thinking skills: ‘which focus on behaviour modification and have the purpose of challenging the students’ fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.’ This opposition to critical thinking in the classroom was part of the Texas-based Republican Party platform, an official policy that was widely condemned and quickly retracted in 2012. So there is some basis for the critical pedagogy movement to be concerned about existing political aims of tertiary education.

Conversely, the critical thinking movement begins from a view of seeing the critical person as a critical consumer of information. This involves using his or her rationality to adjudicate between truth and falsehood, identify hasty generalisations, expose unreliable authority, distinguish between reliable and unreliable information, to carry out argument analysis, and so on. The aim of the movement is to create taxonomies of the skills and dispositions required to achieve the aim of being critical thinkers and to use and inculcate those skills and dispositions in teaching. This naturally emphasises the role that tertiary education can play in incorporating these skills, and cultivating these dispositions in the classroom.

Similarly, scholars that write about what has become known as critical democratic citizenship education have a very different account of critical thinking. Given that critical thinking has a social and political dimension, it is not unreasonable – as Noddings stated – for it to have a dimension of inter-personal socially-appropriate caring as well. In order to cultivate critical citizens he argue that ‘instructional designs are needed that do not capitalise on applying tricks of arguing, nor on the cognitive activity of analysing power structures, but contribute in a meaningful and critical way in concrete real social practices and activities.’ To this end, learning to think critically should – in part at least – be conceptualised as the acquisition of the competence to participate critically in the communities and social practices of which a person is a member or stakeholder.

This kind of educational aim, naturally, has an impact on the development of critical character and virtue. A good citizen should be more than an individual, who is well-appraised of skills in argumentation with the capacity to form sound judgments, but a socially-adept and virtuous person, caring in nature, with the capacity to consider the interests and needs of his fellow man. Critical thinking therefore has moral as well as cultural characteristics. We might call this the socio-cultural dimension of critical thinking. Both the individual and the socio-cultural dimensions can be given a place, and reconciled, in a single model of critical thinking in tertiary education.

Roland Barnett, who sees critical thinkers as being “able to engage with the world and with themselves as with knowledge,” identified at least six distinct, yet integrated and permeable, dimensions to critical thinking. These are: core skills in critical argumentation (reasoning and inference-making), critical judgments, critical thinking dispositions and attitudes, critical actions, critical social relations, and critical creativity or critical being. Each of these has an important place in an overarching model of critical thinking because “the critical spirit … involves persons fully; it involves and takes over their being.”

Why are some jittery about critical thinking and what should be its place in tertiary education? At one level critical thinking is all about the development of certain sorts of skills. These include skills in argumentation, and skills in making sound judgments. Employers want evidence of critical thinking skills in their employees, and graduates are assumed to possess these skills. However, skills without the disposition to use them are not much use, so critical thinking is about dispositions as well. Critical thinking, as both skills and dispositions, is mainly about the development of the individual. We might call this the individual dimension of critical thinking.

In this sense, critical thinking is needed by industry as much as academia. But, of course, society also demands individual critical thinking skills and dispositions as these are important for employment and wider social and political engagements and interactions. Critical thinking is, therefore, both an individual attribute and beneficial to society.

On the political side; bad, dictatorial or inept governments often frown at inculcating critical thinking skills on citizens because of its inbuilt ability to make citizens think critically. This is the major reason educational development is often not on the agenda of most third world countries.

Until he committed suicide on Tuesday last week, Maxwell Lucky Enudi, a final year undergraduate of Zoology and Environmental Biology, University of Calabar (UNICAL), neither demonstrated symptoms of depression nor sickness. His death has thrown the students and the entire university community into mourning. SAM IBOK, KARAGBARA PETER, and LAWRENCE PAUL, students of UNICAL, report

 

WHAT could have made a final year student of the University of Calabar (UNICAL) to commit suicide?

That is the question students of UNICAL keep asking over the death of their colleague-Maxwell Lucky Enudi, who took his life.

The deceased, a final year undergraduate of Zoology and Environmental Biology, was preparing to defend his project when the tragic incident occurred. An indigene of Delta State, the deceased was a former class representative of his department.

The incident occurred at Ekpo Abasi in Calabar South Local Government Area where sympathisers found Enudi lay lifeless after taking ‘sniper’, a poisonous substance last Tuesday, CAMPUSLIFE learnt.

However, management and students are discussing the matter in hushed tones, with the former not wanting to speak much on the matter. Enudi’s former Head of Department Dr Nta Nta, also repeatedly turned down interview on the deceased.

When contacted via a telephone, the Chairman of the UNIUYO’s Board of Media and Community Relations, Dr Joseph Ekpang, confirmed the incident, describing it as ‘regrettable’.

Similarly, Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), DSP Irene Ugbo, a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), also confirmed the incident to our reporters. He assured that investigation was ongoing.

An eyewitness, who identified herself as Violet Boniface, told CAMPUSLIFE that Enudi’s action might not be unconnected with some stress he was going through in his project.

She said: “Just as with other cases of suicide recorded among students over the previous months, Maxwell was said to have carried out the act by drinking ‘sniper’.

Violet continued: “It is rumoured in school that Maxwell’s action had something to do with academic issues.

“It is so painful, after all the aluta struggle. It is unfortunate as he chose to be one of the numerous young persons who have opted for suicide as a way of ending depression he had battled for months.”

Some of his colleagues who spoke with CAMPUSLIFE described the deceased as funny, very intelligent and smart who would be solely missed.

Enudi’s classmate and confidant Emmanuel Idiong told CAMPUSLIFE that Maxwell did not show any sign of depression.

“He was our Class Rep. He was a hardworking and a cheerful guy. I can’t believe he took his life after all the stress in school,” said Idiong.

Edoho Tayo, another classmate and friend of the deceased, said she spoke with the deceased on phone a day before the suicide, noting that he never showed any sign of depression or sickness.

“Max’s death is still a shock to me,” Edoho noted.

“I never knew that speaking with him at 10:42 am, a day before the incident was the last time I was going to talk to him. He only complained about his project and allergies on his skin and I assured him that everything would be fine,” she added.

Friends, colleagues and sympathisers gave their tributes on Maxwell’s Facebook timeline.

A sympathiser Cobham Cobski wrote: “Maxwell Lucky Gone! Erased from the journey of life by himself and for himself, Cobham said.

“So, you brought sniper from Lagos and travelled down to Calabar to end your life?  After visiting school that day, gisting with your friends? You took the dark tunnel? Not even leaving a note behind man?

“How can I fathom having to put on a black attire for the Black Man that always joyfully sang the Black Man’s song – Timaya’s song: “I can’t kill myself” because he found a way to do the opposite. I truly lack words to express myself. Rest in peace, my friend. I’ll miss u. Adieu Maxxy”.

Fred Lawrence also posted: “Chai, what a wicked world. Can’t believe that u left us soon. My brother from another mother, my best friend ever. Brother, why you now? We love you but God loves you most. Hard to type RIP.”

Yet, another friend, David Ibok, also sent his condolences online.

“Each time I sit, walk or go about with my normal chores, something just keeps popping up in my head, So truly MAXY is dead?” Ibok asked rather rethorically.

“I wish we weren’t that close, so I wouldn’t have felt the loss … R.I.P BRO only God knows why you decided to pull the plug,” he added.

Similarly, another poster Ogodo Francis, lent his voice. “If there’s any feeling worse than being sad, that’s how I’m feeling right now.”

“I never thought of wishing you this; but why? UNICAL was worth staying because of you. RIP Maxwell Lucky (Warri boy)”.

Another concerned student, Charlie Oyama, posted thus: “So, Maxwell Lucky is truly gone? Really, I can’t stop crying. I pray God have mercy on your soul and give it eternal rest. I will forever miss you dude. RIP bro”.

Maxwell remains has since been buried at his home town in Warri South Local Government Area, Delta State.