By ANDRE D. BISYIT

AS part of preparations to host a befitting Nigerian University Games, NUGA, the University of Jos has secured a N250 million grant from the Abdul Samad Rabiu, ASR, Initiative Africa, to build two-hundred capacity lawn tennis and basketball courts at its Naraguta campus.

During the ground breaking ceremony recently, the Vice Chancellor of the university, Professor Tanko Ishaya, appreciated the ASR Initiative Africa for selecting the school out of many who applied for the grant, noting that the project would not only bring infrastructural development to the educational sector but boost the entire Nigerian economy.

He pointed out that the edifice would not be built for the NUGA games only but evolve into a sports institute in the near future.

He disclosed that the tournament would feature over ten thousand athletes which would boost the business sector of the state and thanked the state government for giving them all the required support.

Dr. Ubong Udoh, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, ASR Initiative Africa, disclosed that the ASR Initiative sets aside a hundred million Dollars annual fund to intervene and create solutions in the areas of health, education and social development.

He applauded the University of Jos management for its doggedness in meeting the required criteria for securing the grant.

He added that the choice of a sports complex was heartwarming as it would be a platform for social cohesion, developing talents, building character and serve as a place where people could build their self-esteem to become good citizens.

Professor Ishaya Pam, the Chairman, Sports Committee, University of Jos, said that in order to drive infrastructural development, the institution sought and obtained the hosting right for NUGA 2024 which was keenly contested for by other universities, assuring that the University of Jos would host the best games ever.

He disclosed that the construction of an indoor sports and taekwondo halls was ongoing while the contract for the construction of an Olympic size swimming pool, a pavilion and the installation of synthetic tracks would soon be awarded.

Bashir Lawandi Dati, Plateau State Commissioner for Youth and Sports Development, through Professor Ezra Gunen, Director of Sports, Plateau State Sports Council, assured of government’s support to enable the institution move forward.

Uni-Jos TETFund to support student’s technological innovations

By HOSEA NYAMLONG

The University of Jos Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) Centre of Excellence in Food Security has said that the centre is set to support students who utilize the power of technology for creative innovations and solutions that address some of the world’s most pressing problems through cutting edge research.

This was contained in a press release signed by Abdullahi Abdullahi, Senior Deputy Registrar (Information and Publications), University of Jos, and made available to THE NIGERIA STANDARD in Jos, recently.

The statement added that the Director of the Centre, Professor Paul Amaza, stated this during a public lecture organized for postgraduate students of the institution in collaboration with Arifa Innovation Platform at the Innovation Hub of the centre in the university’s Naraguta campus.

While welcoming participants to the training, Professor Paul Amaza said that the capacity building programme tagged “Fit-for Purpose Action Research: Exploring the Knowledge Economy,” aimed at igniting critical thinking and innovation among postgraduate students of the university while challenging conventional norms and enabling them to explore new horizons.

He explained that the programme provided a forum for scholars, researchers and students to develop exceptional ideas, contemporary research findings in line with emerging trends with focus on disseminating research outputs for adoption by the private sector including farmers, industry players and other end-users.

Azama pointed out that the adoption of such research outputs would in turn contribute towards enhancing food security and improved livelihoods in the North-Central states and other parts of Nigeria with emphasis on addressing the diverse challenges that affected food security including low crop yields and poor livestock productivity.

He said that other challenges identified were poor access to agricultural markets, low value addition to agricultural produce, land degradation, climate change, pests and diseases as well as inconsistent government policies.

Azama commended the facilitators for their initiative and revealed that those students to be supported were required to submit their project topics and registration details to the TETFund Centre of Excellence on Food Security before publishing their papers.

Earlier in a lead paper presentation, Dr. Nanvyat Nannim explained that open science involves making research data, methods and findings freely available to the public, thereby facilitating collaboration and transparency in the scientific community that could help to accelerate the pace of research.

This, according to Nannim, would enable researchers build on each other’s work more easily leading to reduction in duplication and plagiarism as it allowed researchers to publish in multidisciplinary journals with open access, open peer review and indexed journals in open databases.

Nannim stressed that interdisciplinary research was essential for addressing complex problems that required diverse perspectives and expertise, adding that by combining the insights and methods of different fields, researchers could generate new insights and solutions that would not be possible with a single-discipline approach.

He said, “With climate change and other environmental issues becoming increasingly urgent, researchers are turning their attention to developing sustainable solutions to the world’s problems” and “this includes everything from developing new materials and technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to developing sustainable agricultural practices that can feed the world’s growing population without damaging the environment.”

In another presentation titled, “Statistical Methods: Exploring the Knowledge Economy,” Dr. Simi Goyol of the Faculty of Environmental Sciences, University of Jos, explained that food security is a situation where all people enjoy physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meet their food preferences and dietary needs at all times, for an active and healthy life.

According to her, effective use of research results would help to solve real life problems, adding that food security decisions must be backed by statistical data so as to avoid guesswork or mere intuition because without statistics, much of the groundbreaking research in the sciences would be impossible.

The lecture was attended by postgraduate students from various departments in the university, staff of the centre as well as staff from across other faculties.