Dennis Osadebay

Dennis Chukude Osadebay (29 June 1911 — 26 December 1994) was a Nigerian politician, poet, journalist and former premier of the now defunct Mid-Western Region of Nigeria, which now comprises Edo State and Delta State. He was one of the pioneering Nigerian poets who wrote in English. Quotes "When we came in here, it was like a ghost town, all of you can testify to that, the records are there to show. There was no befitting building here before, there was no place for the VC to stay and I asked myself how else will I go? "I stayed in the campus and was disappointed because it was like a glorified secondary school. With all those behind my mind, I asked God to give me the strength otherwise I go back to Lagos, but I was brought here because of my pedigree and the records I had." "They gave us 35 programmes to run and the programmes cannot sustain the existence of this University because they are the least demanded programmes from applicants. "So I asked myself from the experience all over the places in the world, what is my vision for the University? The slogan I was given was not in consonant with reality, so I sat down because my areas of specialization is strategic and general management. "So i defined what the University should be, 'I want to empower the future generations' our mission is to provide tradition of excellence in teaching, research, innovation, entrepreneurial skills and competent endeavours towards meeting societal needs. "Our vision is to be a leading transformational University for the empowerment of all stakeholders leveraging on technology. "So, I increased the programmes from 35 to 46 since I had the advantage of being an accreditor to NUC for decades, so I leveraged on that to go and meet them. "I said the Governor meant well, it was not out of paucity of funds but surplus that he created three Universities at the same time. He felt the needs of Deltans that total number of candidates that applied for JAMB in each year it doesn't take much number, the rest becomes political thugs, criminals, yahoo yahoo. "Those are the things that encouraged us to say go ahead. Keep fighting until you get where you are going to and we did that to the glory of God, they came for accreditation last year, we got some full, some interim and I have approached NUC again to give us more programmes to enable us exist."