Unilorin verifies oil deposit in Kwara
THE University of Ilorin, Kwara State, is set to ascertain whether the substance recently said to be found in Aran-Orin in Irepodun Local Council Area of the state is truly crude oil deposit.
The institution would be getting involved in the examination with a plan to locate a geological research centre in the town.
Out-going Vice Chancellor of the university, Ishaq Oloyede, who disclosed this in an interview with reporters at the institution, said the school would fund the research centre with about N100 million.
The state government had last year disclosed that a substance likely to be crude oil was found in the town and said the verification of the deposit was being done by the Department of Petroleum Resources, which it had informed of the discovery.
Oloyede said the research centre in the town would enable the geology department of the university to contribute to the examination of the said deposit.
The vice chancellor disclosed that the N100 million with which the university would fund the centre, would be derived from a special intervention fund recently granted the institution by the Federal Government. He said the fund was N4.2 billion and that the university had already planned how to effectively manage it for the development of the institution.
Oloyede noted that to avoid the misapplication of the fund, the university did not rush to collect. He disclosed that the school only recently wrote a proposal to the Educational Trust Fund (ETF) to withdraw N3 billion of the money after carefully deciding on the projects to execute.
He said other projects the N3 billion would be used to fund included the rehabilitation of all laboratories in the institution and building of two additional laboratories.
He added that new Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Education would be built and that the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, which is just being established, would also be built.
The vice chancellor explained that the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine would be sited at the university’s secondary school while the secondary school would be relocated to the mini-campus of the institution and turned to an international school.
Oloyede added that the remaining N1.2 billion would later be collected for projects that would commence during the administration of the in-coming Vice Chancellor, Abdulganiyu Ambali.
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