The Nigeria Open University (NOUN) may have become a haven for frustrated admission seekers given its current student population figure.
Vice-Chancellor of the university, Abdalla Adamu, disclosed that the university is at present home to over 250, 000 active students.
Adamu told newsmen in Abuja that the number is distributed across the 77 study centres scattered all over the country touching all the states, local government areas and the six geopolitical zones.
“I can confidently confirm to you that the total registered active student population is now 254,000 scattered across the 77 study centres in the country,” Adamu said.
The NOUN boss also said that having the 77 study centres means that some states have more than one or two study centres depending on demand, adding that Abuja has about 8 centres.
He further stated that “some organisations come to us and ask for study centres and we call them specialised centres, notably Police, Immigration and the Nigerian Prison Service, while some states have community study centres.
National Daily gathered that the university, which was initially conceived to meet the desire of workers, artisans and experienced individuals that didn’t have the opportunity of acquiring higher or university education early in life, has now been hijacked and taken over by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) prospective.
The VC however noted that at the inception of the Open University, there were misgivings and mistrust about the institution, as many people did not look at it as credible and worthy.
He said the pressure of students getting admission to conventional universities was increasing by the day as almost one million students want to gain admission into universities yearly through JAMB.
He emphasized that the influx has become so enormous that the state study centres can no more cope with the population, which gave rise to requests for community study centres by some states and these requests were mostly from the southern parts of the country.
Meanwhile, the university authority has sacked the two companies manning the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure and replaced them with an in-house team of IT experts, thereby saving the institution about 80 per cent revenue that had earlier been lost to NOUN.