The unfenced university is in Yola, the Adamawa state capital, and is situated on 4,000 hectares of land, The school is only about 130 kilometres away from the Sambisa Forest, considered as the den of Boko Haram terrorists.
The lives of at least 20,000 students studying at Madibbo Adama University of Technology in Adamawa State, northeast Nigeria, are at risk as the university is without a parameter fence.
The unfenced university is in Yola, the Adamawa state capital, and is situated on 4,000 hectares of land, The school is only about 130 kilometres away from the Sambisa Forest, considered as the den of Boko Haram terrorists.
The northeast region has had its fair share of violent crimes and attacks, particularly by Boko Haram terrorists or the Islamic State's West Africa Province.
To safeguard the lives and property of students and lecturers on campus, the university resorted to engaging the services of local vigilantes, to work alongside official security operatives.
Against this backdrop, the Vice Chancellor of the university, Prof. Liman Tukur, has cried out to the Nigerian Government for quick intervention to protect the students and staff of the university.
At a press conference on Tuesday to herald the school’s 27th convocation, Tukur disclosed that pleas to successive governments to put a fence around the school had fallen on deaf ears.
"The university basically has over 4,000 hectares of land, with the built-up area being just a tiny fraction of the huge landmass. With no parameter fencing of the institution, we are constantly battling to arrest encroachments, intrusions and incursions into our land and campus.
"This is even more worrying as the institution looks forward to a massive growth in students’ population and the continuous expansion of facilities," Tukur said.
He also pleaded with the government to dualise the Yola-Mubi highway to ease the hardship of commuters who are mostly students and staff of the university.
According to its website, the school has over 20,000 students and runs undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in seven schools namely: School of Agriculture and Agricultural Technology (SAAT); School of Environmental Science (SES); School of Management and Information Technology (SMIT); School of Pure and Applied Sciences (SPAS); School of Engineering and Engineering Technology (SEET); School of Technology and Science Education (STSE) and School of Postgraduates Studies (SPGS).
Formally known as the Federal University of Technology, Yola, the school was established in 1981 by the Federal Government of Nigeria to provide technologically skilled manpower for the country. It is one of the federal universities recognised by the National Universities Commission (NUC) to offer Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees in different fields of Science and Technology.
The university was merged with the University of Maiduguri in 1984 when it became the Modibbo Adama Campus of the University of Maiduguri. However, in 1988, the action was reversed, granting it full autonomy with the name reverted to the Federal University of Technology, Yola. In 2011, then President Goodluck Jonathan approved the change of the school’s name to Modibbo Adama University of Technology, (MAUTECH) Yola, effective from October 1, 2011.
One of the most daring attacks by terrorists was carried out on the night of April 14-15, 2014, when 276 mostly Christian female students aged between 16 and 18 were kidnapped by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram from the Government Girls Secondary School at the town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria.
About 60 of the schoolgirls escaped immediately following the incident by jumping out from the trucks on which they were being transported, while some others have been rescued by the military.
On April 14, 2023, nine years after the attack, a global advocacy group, Amnesty International lamented that President Muhammadu Buhari-led government had failed to rescue 98 of the girls still languishing in the terrorists’ den.
On February 19, 2018, at 5:30 pm, 110 schoolgirls aged 11–19 years old were also kidnapped by the Boko Haram terrorists from the Government Girls' Science and Technical College (GGSTC), Dapchi in Yobe State, also in northeast Nigeria.
Five of the abducted schoolgirls died on the day they were kidnapped. The terrorist group released others in March 2018, except a Christian girl, Leah Sharibu, who refused to convert to Islam.
Sharibu has not been released till now.
On Monday, April 3, 2023, gunmen suspected to be Boko Haram terrorists attacked Dabna community in the Hong Local Government Area of Adamawa State.
They killed three people and burnt houses and shops.
On Tuesday, July 5, 2022, some gunmen invaded the residence of Reverend Daniel Umaru of the EYN Church Njairi, in the Mubi Local Government Area of Adamawa, killing his 23-year-old and 19-year-old sons and abducting his 13-year-old daughter.
The daughter was released four days later.