Ota- The Vice Chancellor, Covenant University, Ota, Ogun, Prof. Aize Obayan, said the institution would break the jinx of poor ranking of Nigerian universities  and be  among the world’s  best.

Obayan on Saturday in Lagos, said  that her claim was based on parameters  the university had put in place to achieve academic and attitudinal excellence.

A recent 2011 world university ranking report showed that no university in Africa ranked among the best 200 in the world.

Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California, Berkeley, all in U.S, were ranked the best three.

Obayan said that parameters as quality of institutional best practices, corporate representation and the visionary mandate of the university were a strong force behind the claim.

The don said that quality teaching, improved admission process, good learning environment, well-equipped libraries and research materials were among the parameters to ensure that the target was met.

“What we have done over the years, from 2002 to date, was to put things in place that would deliver our set goals.

“I can assure you that we have done everything to ensure that Covenant University, in no distant future, would rank among the world’s best.

“This is because we have far out-classed the required standard set for us within the country.

“So far we are moving closer to the bench mark of the world’s best because from the  beginning, we bench marked ourselves against the world’s  best,” Obayan said.

The vice chancellor said that preparations for the academic briefs were bench marked on world famous universities.

“Before the establishment of the university, the Chancellor, Dr David Oyedepo, had to read about world class universities and included them in the packaging.

“This acted as a reference and to a large extent assisted us in what we have been able to achieve.

“We were able to carry out a set of core values with spirituality as the arrow head.

“ We also worked on how to raise graduates who would be relevant in the world with a great sense of responsibility,” she said.

The professor said that the University took time yearly to review operations of departments in the institution to ensure that issues were promptly tackled as soon as they arose.

She said the exercise helped in exposing strategic areas needed to position the institution to its desired level.

“One thing I do in terms of my position is to draw the attention of the University not just to the attainment of the world class status, but to ensure that we are using world class programmes.

“It may interest you to know that some of the world class universities may not be number one in Information Technology.

“So we are not just aspiring to attain the world class university status, but also the best university in academic programmes,” she added.

Obayan said that the University had admitted a total of 14, 989 students and graduated 6,093 from 2006 till date. (NAN)