ABAKALIKI (Sundiata Post) – Prof. Chigozie Ogbu, the Vice-Chancellor of the Ebonyi State University (EBSU) said that the institution would graduate over 9,559 students at its 12th – 15th convocation slated for Saturday, April 20.Ogbu, who disclosed this at a pre-convocation world press conference held on Thursday at the University’s permanent site at Ishieke, Abakaliki, said that students would be awarded degrees in different programmes.He gave a breakdown of figures to include; first degree awardees, (8278); post graduate diploma, (173), masters degree (610) and PhD awardees (498) respectively).Ogbu added that the event would feature the investiture of Prince Arthur Eze as the Chancellor of the university and award of honorary doctorate degrees to distinguished Nigerians and an award of professor emeritus.“The classification of the degrees is as follows – 90 first-class honours; 2,061 second-class upper division, 2,003 Second clase lower division, 2,789 third class while 70 obtained pass degree.“Our institution has maintained a robust academic environment that encourages teaching and learning and we have excelled in both local and international ratings.“The students population has increased from 14, 335 in 2017 to 19, 500 in 2024 while our academic programmes has increased from five faculties in 1999 when it was established to 11 faculties in 2024.“We have six academic directorates, college of health science and school of post graduate studies and work and study programme.“There are 72 academic programmes in EBSU all of which are accredited by the National Universities Commission (NUC), except for seven new programmes in the new faculty of Engineering and Environmental Sciences,” Ogbu said.On the universities ranking, the VC said that the institution had been ranked among the world best by world ranking bodies.According to him, in 2023, Webometric, based in Spain ranked universities in the world based on some academic criteria.” Ebonyi State University was ranked first among all State Universities in South-East, third among all universities in South-East, behind University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka.“EBSU ranked sixth out of 43 state universities , 33 out of 279 universities in Nigeria; this was similar to the institution’s ranking in January 2023 when it ranked 96 out of 1, 394 sub-saharan Africa , 178 out of 2,047 African universities and 4,146 out of 13, 373 world universities.“In January, another ranking body, Study Abroad Aide based in South Korea sent EBSU a Certificate of Recognition as one of the 100 Best Value Universities (BVU) in Nigeria and 70 per cent beat value universities globally,” Ogbu added.He noted that the body ranked universities based on the academic quality of institutions and school fees compared to the average school fees in the country.“This is meant to guide students who want to go abroad to study in their choice of universities,” he said.The VC thanked Gov. Francis Nwifuru for increasing the monthly subvention of to EBSU and reduced the state tax on the university.“This has enabled us to meet up with the basic expenditure obligation of payment of staff salaries and some mandatory daily expenditures of the university.“We have paid monthly staff salaries up to March, we have paid the 15 months arrears of 20 per cent deductions from staff salaries during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.“Despite this modest improvement, there still exists a huge gap financially between what we have been able to do in the past few months and the expected financial needs of EBSU,” he said. (NAN)