By Emmanuel Elebeke

In a move to churn out IT based and skilled students, the University of Mkar, Benue state has signed a partnership agreement with New Horizons Systems Solutions for the training of its 800 students on various ICT courses.

The Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Ngunan Agbe, who made this known at the official launch of the programme said “our mission is to raise up young men and women that are God-fearing, properly focused, generally goal driven, morally upright, intellectually sound, mentally alert, enterprisingly minded and spiritually alive with a robust knowledge of ICT for the total man development concept.”

This according to him became necessary in view of the tremendous economic growth through social networks, e-commerce, e- procurements and technology driven business processes in the world over, adding that this has created the need for university curricula to come up with industry ready graduates that will hit the ground running.

University of Mkar is owned by NKST church, an offshoot of the Dutch Reformed Church/ Sudan United Mission of South Africa and North America respectively.

Speaking at the event, Managing Director and CEO of the company Tim Akano thanked the University management for the trust reposed in New Hoeizon and promised to deliver quality ICT experts of international standard, in addition to over 120 students of Crawford University were produced with different international ICT certifications last year, more than 240 from Covenant University.

“We have promised to give the university the best service and this we have started with the immediate renovation of the computer laboratory by increasing its status to two ultra modern multimillion naira ICT centre, well furnished with 50brand new computers, projectors, furniture i.e. tables and chairs, UPS, stabilizers and air conditioners. “We have also provided course materials worth N2 million to the university library, this is with a view to improving students’ computer and business skills” Akano offered.