The Vice Chancellor, University of Maiduguri, Prof. Aliyu Shugaba, has said he made deliberate efforts to deny Boko Haram an opportunity to recruit students from the school by refusing to shut down the university at the height of insurgency in the North-East between 2014 and 2018.

Shugaba said had he succumbed to pressure and shut down the school, Boko Haram would have recruited idle students as terrorists.

The VC spoke on Wednesday in Maiduguri at a press briefing heralding the varsity’s 24th convocation ceremony scheduled for Saturday, November 18.

He said, “The university was the target of the terrorists but despite every attack, threat and provocation by the terrorists we never closed down the institution; and we never wavered in our teaching, research and community services

“We never closed down the university, because if we had, it would have been tantamount to surrendering more than 50,000 students to the advantage of t.he terrorists, because they would have had a population of youths to conscript into terror.”

Shugaba said to resist the terrorists, the university management spent a lot of funds to pay hunters and vigilantes to augment the efforts of troops and other security agents to secure the university.

He disclosed that the Vice President, Kashim Shettima, the Chairman of BUA Group, Abdussamad Rabiu; the Shehu of Borno, Alhaji Abubakar Ibn Umar Garbai El-Kanemi; and a former Registrar of the university, Dr. Dahiru Bobbi, would be conferred with honorary doctorate at the combined convocation on Saturday.

A total of 33, 429 graduands would receive their degrees and certificates, he added.