One of the oldest and senior lecturing staff of the University of Jos, Professor Etannibi Alemika of the Department of Sociology, has said that decades of academic records of the Faculties hosted by the UniJos Library Complex were lost to the inferno that consumed parts of the Complex on the evening of Saturday the 8th of October, 2016.
Documents, projects and academic records of staff, current and past students of these Faculties have been lost to the fire.
Speaking to journalists he said that the some departmental offices are gone ‘which means that our records since the 1970s are all gone, documents with respect to students and with respect to staff are all gone’.
According to the Vice Chancellor of UniJos, Prof. Sebastain Maimako after inspecting the level of damage by the inferno with members of his management staff on Sunday the 9th of October at a briefing in the Senate Chambers described the incident as ‘devastating’.
‘At about 6:30 in the evening (8th of October) we received a report that a certain wing of the university was being gutted by fire and the complex we are referring to is what we call in the university community as the Library Complex, Naraguta Campus. Now this Complex that was commissioned in 1997 houses two faculties apart from the library complex. The Faculties of Management Sciences and the Social Sciences’ the VC said.
He added that some departmental libraries, departmental results bound and processed and the ongoing examination which has been greatly affected.
Maimako thanked the fire fighting departments of the state, private individuals, government and students who risked their lives to put out the fire and also confirmed there were no casualties reported.
The VC reiterated managements effort to have a mini fire station in the Institution.
According to an eyewitness report, a student who was reading at a nearby complex said the fire was started by a spark from a power surge and as the blaze picked up, the authorities were alerted and the men of the Plateau State Fire Service came and made efforts to put out the fire which lasted for six hours.
But despite the efforts of the Fire Service, the fire destroyed everything on the first floor of the Complex which is the floor of the library, the departmental offices and offices of the academic staff of the Faculties of Social Sciences and Management Sciences.
According to the Deputy Director of the Plateau Fire Service, Mr. Samuel Musa, he said his men were not able to contain the fire initially and had to send for reinforcements from the Government House Fire Station who turned up promptly, the Bukuru Fire Station, the Nigerian Air Force Fire Unit, the JUTH Water Tanker Supply Unit which gave them ‘enough volumes of water to contain the fire’.
In a related development, after the VC conveyed an emergency senate meeting on the 10th of October, some of the resolutions from the meetings was that the Directorate of Physical Facilities will carry out an integrity test on the burnt building before commencement of renovation of the building.
Senate has directed the that students whose scripts were burnt during the inferno will re write the examinations again on a later date which will be communicated to them by their respective Heads of Departments.
Meanwhile academic activities has resumed in the Institution after the one day postponement of examination as a result of the unfortunate fire incident.
In a related development, the Governor of Plateau State, Simon Lalong, has assured the University of Jos of the state government’s support to put up a fire fighting sub- station in the University as well as reconstruct the library.
He said this when he paid a visit to UniJos on the 10th of October and in his words ‘the damage is severe not because of the financial implication but its historical implication’.
He expressed that no human casualty was reported and added that the state government will reach out to President Muhammed Buhari to see what the Federal Government can do to restore the burnt facilities.
REJOICE SHAMMAH AND JOHN DOEE
