Vice Chancellor of University of Maiduguri, UNIMAID, Abubakar Njodi has said that the Boko Haram insurgency had left the Northern region educationally disadvantaged by 500 to 1000 years.

Njodi made these remarks when the Presidential Initiative on the North East Initiative, PINE, led by its Vice Chairman, Tijjani Tumsa, paid him a visit to condole him and the University community over the recent Boko Haram attack that led to the death of a professor of veterinary medicine.

The VC said that with the attack of Boko Haram especially on western education, it might now take the North between 500 and 1000 years to compete educationally with the South.

“Education in the North was already endangered prior to Boko Haram,” he said, adding that a survey that was conducted before the period of insurgency revealed “that the North was behind the South by 100 years.”

Njodi noted that though another study has not yet been carried out, he feels that the difference “would have grown to between 500 and 1000 years.”

He however assured that the University of Maiduguri would continue to contribute its quota towards bridging the gap.

On collaborating with the PINE to provide succour to the people of the Northeast after the insurgency, the VC said UNIMAID was ready to get fully on board.

He said: “We saw it (the recent bomb attack) as a challenge we have to overcome.

“We knew from the onset that the fight was against us. If Boko Haram is a struggle, we knew it was against us for Boko Haram literally meaning a fight against western education.

“And as a university, we are light of western education. When it (the attack) came on that fateful day, we knew it had come to us though we had tried to avert it.”

Earlier, chairman of the PINE, Tumsa, had told the Vice Chancellor that the committee was at the university on a solidarity and condolence visit to seek for ways to restore the lost glory of the Northeast region.

He disclosed that the delegation had visited the Borno State Specialist Hospital, Maiduguri to commiserate with the victims of the recent accidental bombing of an IDP camp in Rann community by a Nigerian Air Force Jet Fighter.

He said that the committee donated the sum of N20 million to the Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Labaran Ahmed, to offset the medical bills of victims being treated in the hospital.

Tumsa also said that N10,000 was given to each of the patients.