Nigerian students make $1m Hult Prize 20-team shortlist
A team of Nigerian students and technology innovators has made it to the 20-team shortlist for the $1 million Hult Prize. They are the only African team still in the competition.
The 2018 Hult Prize with theme ‘Harnessing the Power of Energy to Transform 10 Million Lives’, began from the campus level to regional level until it got to the global stage, while hundreds of participants/teams from many world class universities participated.
The team invented a smart Solar-Powered Irrigation System to ease irrigation farming and, alongside other competitors, would go all-out to make the 4-team shortlist in the UK.
The students, who have made the country proud thus far, are in the International Islamic University of Malaysia. They won the first position at the campus level and proceeded to the regional final in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital.
At the regional finals, there were 60 teams and 200 participants from some of the best universities across the world, including Canada, Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan and Taiwan.
One of the students and prime mover of the innovation, Faisal Sani Bala, said their work was on a new technology that boosts irrigation farming like never before and also provides light for rural communities without electricity.
ASUU calls on Osun, Oyo govts to save LAUTECH
THE Academic Staff Union of Universities, Port Harcourt Zone, on Monday called on the Osun and Oyo State governments, the joint owners of the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomosho, to fund the institution and save it from collapse.
ASUU urged both governments to urgently take full responsibility of funding the university rather than shifting the financial burden of running it to the students.
The Coordinator of ASUU, Port Harcourt zone, Uzo Onyebinama, said the union was still negotiating with the governments of Osun and Oyo to finance the institution.
He said, “Education is a social service and it ought to be treated as such. All hands must be on the deck to compel the Osun and Oyo State governments to do the needful and take full responsibility for the funding of LAUTECH and save the institution.
NYSC redeploys corps members
A total of 700 out of 1,289 members of the National Youth Service Corps serving in Borno State have been redeployed.
The NYSC Coordinator in Borno State, Alhaji Rabiu Katsina, disclosed this in a meeting with journalists held on Monday in Katsina, capital of Katsina State, after the closing ceremony of the three-week orientation exercise for the 2018 Batch ‘B’ corps members in the state.
Katsina said the corps members were redeployed due to challenges ranging from insecurity and ill-health to marital issues. He said, “We cannot stop the corps members who seek redeployment for health reasons. We have to release them to their respective parents who will continue to take care of them. The same thing applies to female corps members who are married. This is strictly on compassionate grounds.”
The coordinator also said that Borno had decided to pay various monthly allowances to corps members, aside from the normal monthly allowance paid to them by the NYSC, as an incentive to encourage those deployed to the state.
He said, “Borno State now pays N100,000 monthly allowance to corps members who are doctors and N50,000 monthly allowance to corps members who are paramedics, including nurses and physiotherapists.