Why World Bank Selected FUTO As Centre For Future Energies And Electro-Chemical System

In order to facilitate international Masters Degree programmes, the Federal University of Technology, FUTO, Owerri, Imo State has been selected by the World Bank as the Africa Centre of excellence in Future Energies and Electro-Chemical System, otherwise called ACE-FUELS.

The masters programmes are in Electro-Chemical Technology, Future Energies, Nanotechnology and Corrosion Technology.

Vice Chancellor, VC of the university, Professor Francis Eze while speaking a media parley, put together by the university to mark his three years in office noted that the university had concluded plans to gather wastes for the production of energy.

While calling on Nigerian institutions to embrace the new technology, Eze said it was the current global practice.

The VC said, “As we have continued to improve on the aesthetics of the campus environment through the maintenance of green lawns, proper waste disposal and management are also billed to be converted into energy. This is the current trend in most of the civilized world and we are emulating it. It would be of immeasurable help in power generation”.

He stated FUTO was established as a specialized university to impart practical knowledge and requisite skills needed to fast-track the technological development in the country.

Eze however, revealed that it was to deepen and expand research activities and innovation that his administration created the office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research, Development and Innovation

He also disclosed the accomplishments and challenges his administration encountered during his three years in office.

Encroachment on FUTO land, hostile and uncooperative attitude of host communities, lack of staff quarters, inadequate power supply, ill-equipped library and laboratory facilities, poor road networks and inadequate hostel accommodation among others as some of the challenges, according to the VC, faced by the university.

FUTO is the Oldest University of Technology in Nigeria and was established in 1980 by Executive fiat with the composition and appointment of the first provisional Council by Nigeria’s First Executive President, Shehu Shagari.

It became the first of three such Universities set up by the Federal Government of Nigeria who sought to establish a University of Technology in each geo-political region and particularly in a State which did not have a conventional University.