Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Development, Professor Felix Salako addressing a members of ARCN/DelPHE Teams
The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Oluwafemi Olaiya Balogun, has restated the commitment of the University to prudent management of fund.
Professor Balogun disclosed this while receiving delegates from the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN) and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development ( DelPHE Project) which visited the University, to monitor and evaluate the various ongoing projects, sponsored by their organisations.
The Vice-Chancellor, who was represented by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Development, Professor Felix Salako, expressed appreciation of the University to the funding partners while assuring them that FUNAAB practices prudent management of fund, with a zero tolerance for financial recklessness.
He disclosed that two years ago, when the University received the ARCN grants, it did not have a Grants’ Management office, but now, the Institution has a full-fledged Directorate, saddled with the responsibility of securing and managing grants.
The Vice-Chancellor said the present administration operates due process strictly, as the visiting team must have realized such claim through its current Evaluation Exercise, proclaiming that “in this University, everything passes through the appropriate channel”.
In his remarks, the Team Leader of the DelPHE Project, Dr. Kolawole Adebayo, highlighted areas of the concentration of Evaluation Exercise to include, “accessing how the partnership between Universities in the South has fared as well as advise the Association of Commonwealth Universities, British Council and the Management of DelPHE on how to extend grants to developing countries’ institutions, in future”.
According to him, the current partnership is between FUNAAB and the University of Science and Technology, Ghana, as he pointed out that another aspect of the evaluation was to determine if DelPHE’s association with FUNAAB had resulted into positive contributions from other funding agencies.
The ARCN Team Leader, Mr. Gabriel Malomo said the Evaluation Exercise, embarked upon by ARCN would include assessing the level of work done and challenges facing the seven projects, being funded by the Council.
The University’s Director of Grants Management, Professor O.B. Oyewole and the Principal Investigator for the DfID/DelPHE Project, Dr. A. R. Popoola, were on ground to receive the delegates.