By Frank Ikpefan, Abuja

The University of Abuja has said it needs more funds to complete the ongoing perimeter fencing project of the university as a result of the rising insecurity in the country which has led to the kidnapping of students, especially in the North.

The Vice-Chancellor of the university, Prof. Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah said this on Thursday in Abuja at a briefing to celebrate two years in office.

He said the university has been able to raise close to a billion naira for the parameter fencing project.

While stressing that the Federal Government was committed to the safety of students and staff of the university and had released some money earlier, he said support was still coming in from various quarters and more was needed to ensure the fence was completed.

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The V-C said: “We are constructing a fence on this campus not only to beautify the university but because of security. There are a lot of stories about kidnappers going to schools; we want to be well ahead of them. The Federal Government has given us money to do this and we want a situation whereby people are free to move.

“We have spent a lot of money on the security fencing but it is not enough yet because what we need is billions to do the fence but we have gotten close to a billion. We are really struggling to make sure all the fences are completed.

“We continue to receive support for fencing, a few weeks ago we got about an additional support of N16 million because the Federal Government understands that this public university in the Federal Capital Territory must be secured and safe.

“Our students exposure to insecurity is very serious but we are not resting and we have strategies we have put in place to make sure our students are secured and there is no going back on the fencing but since we know we can’t get all the money we need instantly, we are working with security operatives regularly to keep them safe and ad we get the money because we need these funding, we will do more in addition to what we are doing.”

Na’Allah, who noted that his greatest achievement in the last two years was the establishment of a vibrant portal for the university added that in addition to the many infrastructural development, a grant of N850 million has been received from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) to construct more hostels for students.

He explained that the TETFund funded hostels which were different from those to be undertaken by ten private investors through the public-private partnership arrangement of the Federal Government, were primarily to provide more campus accommodation for all students of the university, in line with a grooming policy, to have all students live on campus.

The V-C said: “The hostels we have are less than 20 per cent of the population of the students. In the last year, we are strengthening that to ensure we have more hostels on campus and we received 23 formal investors who applied and 10 were shortlisted whom we are working with following the Federal Government’s arrangement on PPP.

“The investors will move into campus and begin to build, we are developing a policy that students should be able to stay on our campus especially, under-graduates throughout their studies in the university.

“We are also looking at grants to make this happen and TETFund has given us N850 million  to build hostels on our campus and we are already in the process to begin implementation of the hostels. This will be different from the private hostels.”