How we resisted Boko Haram, attempts to shut down UNIMAID – VC, Prof Shugaba

How we resisted Boko Haram, attempts to shut down UNIMAID – VC, Prof Shugaba The Vice Chancellor of the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID), Professor Aliyu Shugaba, has revealed how the institution has managed to remain open despite the attacks by Boko Haram in Borno state. Shugaba credited the resistance of the administration, security agencies, hunters, vigilante groups, and government support for security on and off campus. Don spoke Thursday in Abuja at the office of Image Merchants Promotions Limited (IMPR), PRNigeria Editors and Economic Confidential. The Biochemistry professor revealed that UNIMAID also fortified its perimeter fence and made all staff and students aware of security measures. Shugaba said that even when a professor of Veterinary Medicine was killed in 2017 by a suicide bombing, the university was not closed so that evil does not triumph. He recalled how an Education Minister visited Maiduguri to close the school, but resisted because students and workers chose to defy the challenges. “We had around 40,000 students at the time and all the roads leading out of the city had been closed for fear of Boko Haram or taken over by the elements. “The only one working at the time, the Maiduguri-Yobe-Kano highway, still contained many threats from Boko Haram. “Where and to whom are we going to deliver these 40,000 students if we decide to close? If we did, the insurgents could have harmed them or taken them and turned them into terrorists. “So we decided to stay in the school to protect them and we continued our teaching, learning and research activities. “Right now, we have instilled so much resistance in our students that if they hear bomb blasts, they laugh and call it tunes. We are not afraid of Boko Haram at all. “We have instituted a smooth transition process so that if the current VC dies, there is an immediate successor who also has a successor who will take over the leadership,” Shugaba revealed. He said the challenge from Boko Haram led to the improvement of UNIMAID as the school now has the best department to study violent extremism and a Center for Peace and Conflict Studies. In his comments, Shuaib thanked Shugaba and his team for the great job of keeping the university running in the face of life-threatening dangers.