By Chiekezie Emmanuel

The Vice-Chancellor Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT), Professor Aloysius-Michaels Oklie has described the institution as a “Theatre of innovations”

The VC stated this in an exclusive interview with ESUT Monitor on Tuesday shortly after inspecting innovative products displayed by faculties at the University Pavilion, Agbani.

He stated that from previous exhibition “What I did observe is that ESUT is a theatre for “Innovations” but they have not been receiving the appropriate support because of lack of publicity. The essence of these exhibition displays is to get the one’s we can easily support and improve upon.

 “Last year , His Excellency Dr Peter Mbah donated ₦50 million to aid commercialisation and his friend Sir Bernd Bergmair was able to support him with ₦52 million” and the Alumni supported with ₦1 million . We wanted them to remodel after His Excellency comment and after to represent their works and money will be disbursed to them because the money in a dedicated account. You can see now that we are happy that the facilities are not sleeping. The products we have seen are encouraging, that if we are able to give the little we have and bring in industry to partner and collaborate, we are going to expand beyond expectations,” he emphasised.

The VC stressed that ESUT can compete globally with their peers but added that the university must get it right in building facilities and partnerships

“ESUT can compete globally in collaboration with other partners. The institutions you are seeing abroad are not doing industrial practice alone. They are leveraging on partnership, expansion of where they are, it is just like what you are doing here .

“If you look at your department (MSS Communication), you need dedicated television station, digital cameras and other equipment to perform just like the public relations officer. So if we don’t support them with the necessary equipment, they will compete at the national level but at the global, they are getting more sophisticated. What I told them (during the inspection) is that we need to bring in reputable companies such as Brewery department to help to intervene in our laboratories and to do things together and become the research group for a company like the Nigeria Breweries Limited (NBL)

He further stated that the management will encourage entrepreneurship to leverage with collaborations “What they do at the global level is that once  they fish out a resource person here, they would take him out of the system, move him abroad and that thing will die . That is what we want to stop. That is what His Excellency is equally working on, he wants to see those people that we can recommend and there will be funding to help them start or move to the level of patenting, then the commercialization will follow, ” he concluded.