Prof Florence Obi, the Vice Chancellor, University of Calabar (UniCal), says the university could not recruit its best brains because of constraints arising from the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS).
Obi stated this while speaking to newsmen on the possibility of absorbing the best graduating student at the university’s 37th convocation.
Moses Udofia, from the Department of Accounting, scored 4.92 on Cumulative Grade Point Average to become the best graduating student.
The vice chancellor further stated that it had been extremely difficult to get waivers from the appropriate authorities to absorb brilliant students.
She said that the development had adversely affected the university because highly talented and brilliant young scholars produced by the university could not be engaged.
“The best would have been to catch them young and groom them to take over the university system for the future.
“In my first convocation, we announced plans to retain all the first class graduates of that year, we later discovered that it wasn’t possible due to these challenges.
“Another reason was the fact that we were not granted waivers by the Head of Service to bring these best brains onboard, so we keep losing them.
“For this year we may be lucky because IPPIS has been taken off, and we also have a waiver to recruit about 350 people, but we are still waiting for the breakdown and budgetary provision,” she said.
Obi said that brilliant and talented scholars who passed through the university would be given priority attention as soon as budgetary allocation for the recruitment was made.(NAN)