Akwa Ibom Governor, Chief Godswill O. Akpabio has decried the proliferation of universities in the Country without adequate funding of the already established ones.

Chief Akpabio made the remark Thursday when the Presidential Visitation Panel to the University of Uyo led by Alhaji Aliyu Sambo paid him a courtesy visit at Governor’s Lodge, Uyo. The governor described as sad and appalling the establishment of new universities without adequate funding of existing ones.

He blamed the Federal Ministry of Education for the dearth of funds facing the existing universities and not President Goodluck Jonathan who inherited the problem created by the ministry.

The Governor particularly cited the non-release of take-off grant to the University of Uyo 20 years after the establishment of the university, and appealed to the panel to compel the Federal of Ministry of Education to adequately fund existing universities in the Country.

While thanking Mr. President for setting up the visitation panel with people of proven integrity, Chief Akpabio said his administration has intervened by releasing N100 million to university of Uyo for provision of infrastructure, constructed internal roads, built Dialysis Centre, Paediatric Unit in the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital, and helped in re-accreditation of some programmes, among others.

Earlier, the Chairman of the Presidential Visitation Panel, Alhaji Sambo, had said that since the university’s visitor, Mr. President as provided for in the law is supposed to visit the university every five years could not do so, he has to set up the panel, explaining that the panel did not come to witch-hunt or probe anybody or the institution rather it is to improve the university.

Sambo mentioned poor funding, inadequate staffing and trespass of the permanent site of the university at Use Offot in Uyo as problems confronting the university and appealed to the state government to issue Certificate of Occupancy to the institution.

He regretted that in the past 20 years the university has not collected any take-off grant but thanked the state government for helping to provide infrastructure and re-accreditation of 82 academic programmes by the National Universities Commission (NUC), noting “Without the state government, the university would have been closed down because it initially presented 66 academic programmes but seven were accredited then”.