9.7 per cent of students live on campus

The Vice-Chancellor of the Benue State University (BSU), Makurdi, Prof.  Msugh Kembe, said on Tuesday that only 9.7 per cent of the institution’s 26, 818 students’ population lived on campus.

Kembe made this disclosure in Makurdi at the inauguration of a twin female hostel in the university.

He said the institution developed the facility to reduce the acute shortage of accommodation confronting the students.

According to him, the university is grappling with the insecurity of its students, who live outside the university.

The VC, however, said that 160 female students out of the 10,898 female population would be accommodated in the new hostel.

He said that only a negligible number of the female students hitherto had accommodation on campus.

Kembe explained that each block of the new hostels had 20 rooms with each of the room containing four bed spaces.

The VC  said the university required more of such structures to accommodate more students on campus in order to curtail crime rate and insecurity among students.

Kembe expressed satisfaction with the efforts of the wife of the Benue governor, Mrs Eunice Ortom, who was to inaugurate the building.

The VC said the building cost the university about N83 million, adding that the State Government should be committed to the infrastructure development of the university.

On her part, the wife of the governor said the university authority had done well to provide such a state-of- the- art accommodation for its female students.

She said accommodation was one of the basic requirements of the university to provide for its population which included male and female students.

Ortom said the female students were on a daily basis distracted from their studies, adding that they had unpleasant experiences by not living on campus.

The governor’s wife, therefore, urged the school to adopt public-private partnership model in the development of its hostel accommodation.

“I appeal to well meaning Benue people and the business community to support the school in its quest to provide accommodation for all of its students."

“I shall do what is necessary to assist in my little way to develop additional hostels,’’ she said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the the institution awarded the project to Lagoro Nigeria Limited in May 2015 and it was completed in November 2016.