Speech of Archbishop Ignatius A. Kaigama, the Chancellor of Godfrey Okoye University, Enugu, on the 10th Convocation Ceremony, 19th November, 2022

Your Excellencies,

The Proprietor of Godfrey Okoye University, Father-Vice Chancellor,

My dear brothers and sisters,

Please permit to stand on the already established protocol. Today marks yet another milestone in our university as we celebrate the 10th convocation of this great Catholic university. I congratulate the fresh graduates of our university, especially the pioneer graduates of the Faculty of Law. We pray that God blesses your future plans and actions and guide you in the light of the knowledge and grace you have received in our university during your studies.

We thank God for the tremendous progress our relatively young university has recorded. From a humble beginning with two faculties, the university today has six faculties with a School of Postgraduate Studies, offering courses in accredited post graduate diploma, master’s and PhD programmes. The latest addition to our success narrative is our College of Medicine. We cannot thank God enough for his benevolence.

We are grateful to God that academic activities have taken off in this main campus of our university with the Centre of Practical Skills and our College of Medicine. With the commencement of academic activities here, nobody will be in doubt that our main campus (which is the permanent site of the university) will see tremendous progress and development in the next couple of years.

We are also grateful to God for many European investors who have come to our main campus because of our GO Uni-European Business Park. The business park, which will be opened on 25 November 2022 in the presence of over 100 dignitaries from Europe, is one of the biggest blessings of God to our university. By the grace of God, this business park will make our university the hub of European investment in Nigeria and a centre of excellence among Nigerian universities. We cannot thank God enough.

Furthermore, just last Monday we got this good news:I have good news! The U.S. Mission in Nigeria is pleased to work with you on the Fulbright program and other professional exchanges funded by the U.S. government. The annual timeline for Fulbright application is February 1 with June 1 deadline. Your university will be included in the list of our Fulbright affiliated institutions in Nigeria.

Please send detailed names, email addresses and phone numbers of the university principal officers to me as soon as possible so I can add to our mailing list.

Congratulations and kind regards.

Sincerely,

Clemson.

This is indeed good news. You can see how much God is doing in our university. This good news is coming in the context of this 10th convocation. We are profoundly grateful to God for all he is doing for us.

In addition, we thank God for making us the first university in Africa to inaugurate a chair of Centre for Innovation, Development and Entrepreneurship Africa with Prof. Solomon Nwaka as holder of the chair. This is just an addition to 32 points on our scorecard as a university.

Our university has always recognised God as the source of its blessings. This is why the university takes prayers seriously. Godfrey Okoye University is a praying university. We pray that this spirit of prayer and openness to God will be sustained in the university. We are grateful to God for the building of the Chapel of Forgotten Twins, which the Vice Chancellor announced during the last convocation. This chapel is dedicated to the memory of all twins killed for no other reason than just for entering this world as twins. This chapel will remind us to pray for all children who have been abused, abandoned and killed in Nigeria and in the world. It is very good that our university has not forgotten those who were not allowed to have even a name in the world.

Finally, let me thank the VC for the work he and his team are doing in our university. I thank the proprietor, Bishop Callistus Onaga, and his Auxiliary Bishop Ernest Obodo for supporting the VC in the onerous task of building this university and empowering our youth to make their own contributions to the development of our country and the world. Thank you all and God bless you!