The Vice Chancellor of the Gombe State University (GSU), Prof. Aliyu Elnafaty, on Thursday said 116 out of the 5,944 graduating students of the university, passed out with First Class honours.

Elnafaty disclosed this during the press briefing ahead of the combined convocation of the university, which is scheduled to hold from October 10 to 13, for the award of first degrees, postgraduate diploma, higher degrees and prizes.

He said 28 had distinction from the non-classified degrees (Professional), 1,511 got second class upper and 3,326 second class lower, were 801 had third class degrees and 162 graduated with pass degrees.

He said out of the number, 40 per cent were female, an increase from 30 per cent in the last three years.

Elnafaty said that the university had experienced rapid development and had grown in quality and size, adding that “we have 40 undergraduate and 68 post graduate programmes, all of which had full accreditation by the National Universities Commission and other relevant bodies”.

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He also said the university would confer honorary doctorate degrees on Vice President Kashim Shettima, Prof. Idris Mohammed, a renowned Professor of Infectious Disease; Mr. Boss Mustapha, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Hajiya Zainab Ahmed; former Minister of Finance and Alhaji Kashim Imam, former member, Board of Trustees of TETFund.

Others are Maj.-Gen. Timothy Shelpidi (Late), who was the General Commander of the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring group in Liberia and Malam Abdulhadi Usman, self-trained scientist, who invented a cooking stove, which uses water and generating plant that generates energy up to 7.5 KVA without the use of fuel.

The Star