The ongoing first semester examinations at the University of Jos (UNIJOS), have been postponed pending the outcome of an emergency meeting following a fire incident that occurred on Saturday night.
The school’s senate is expected to decide what will happen to the remaining examinations yet to be conducted after the fire incident that destroyed the main library complex in the institution.
In a statement signed by the Registrar of the institution, Monday Danjem, the postponement is to enable the school authority determine what to do about the ongoing examinations as some unmarked scripts got burnt.
Other major issues that would be looked into vary from how to restore the burnt academic works, vital documents such as projects, research works and thesis of former students and other sensitive materials.
The Vice Chancellor of the institution, Professor Sebastian Maimako, in company of the institution’s management staff, after accessing the level of damage done, described the incident as “devastating”.
It is indeed a tragic event for the institution as all academic records of students and staff, including decades of academic work, library books, have been destroyed by the fire.
A professor in the Department of Sociology, Elisha Alemika, describing the enormity of the destruction, confirmed that “records belonging to both staff and students since the 1970s, are all gone”.
The Deputy Director, Plateau State Fire Service, Samuel Musa, said that in spite of the spirited efforts of the state fire service and that of students, “the inferno was too much to handle as it defied all attempts which resulted in the destruction of everything on the first floor of the complex”.