Igbinedion University
Igbinedion University Okada, established in 1999, is the premier private university in Nigeria. Located at Okada Wonderland in Okada, a town beside Benin City, Edo state. The university was founded by Sir Gabriel Osawaru Igbinedion CFR, a billionaire, philanthropist and a local leader.
The university operates on a collegiate system of tertiary education. It has accredited faculties and courses in Law, Medicine, Natural and Applied Sciences, Business and Management Studies, Pharmacy, Engineering and the Arts and Social Sciences. It has an enrollment of about 5000 students and is supervised by the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Eghosa Osaghae. It also offers postgraduate courses in professional fields like law, accounting etc.
The University has recorded several landmark achievements including being the first private university to produce medical doctors.[1] In 2006, a student of the university, Mr Sunday Damilola Olawuyi obtained a First Class Honours degree in the highly competitive Nigerian Bar examinations, thereby making the university the only private university in Nigeria to have achieved that feat.
Igbinedion University, Okada has devoted to developing and strengthening the academic programmes offered in the various colleges to meet international standards and preparing them for accreditation by the National Universities Commission (NUC), the federal agency that has responsibility for quality assurance and maintenance of standards, and the relevant national regulatory professional bodies. The latter bodies include the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, MDCN (Medicine), Council of Legal Education (Law), Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria, COREN (Engineering), Computer Professional Council of Nigeria (Computer Science), and Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, ICAN (Accounting). The accreditation of all the programmes including medicine, law, engineering and accounting by these bodies confirms the high quality of academic programme offered by the varsity. Also, more than 60% of its first degree graduands yearly, proceed for postgraduate studies abroad with high success rate and commendation according to its Vice Chancellor during the institution's convocation ceremony in November, 2013.
Quite early in its life, and in line with its vision of being an internationally competitive university, IUO identified external linkages and networking with (older and mentoring-capable) universities and development partners as strategic to the realization of its goals. By March 2007, the university had established linkages with the University of Westminster (UK) in the areas of staff development, diplomatic studies and ICT and Howard University, USA (telemedicine and teleconferencing), and was finalizing an exchange programme with East Carolina University (USA) in the area of global development. The university was admitted into full membership of the Global University Network for Innovation, GUNI, based in Barcelona, Spain, the European Association for International Education, EAIE, and the Network Towards Unity for Health (Maastricht, the Netherlands) amongst other external affiliations. It was also part of the Consortium of Development Partnerships, CDP, a conglomerate of universities, research institutions, governments and development partners in North America, Europe and West Africa. IUO’s Centre for Presidential Studies coordinated and continues to coordinate Module 8 of the CDP’s project on Local Contexts of Conflict and Peace-building in West Africa that involves researchers from Ghana, Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, the Netherlands and Nigeria.