26/12/2023
ILORIN EMIRATE ADVOCATES FOR FG TO RENAME UNILORIN AS SHEIKH ALIMI UNIVERSITY
The people of the Ilorin Emirate in Kwara State demanded on Monday that the University of Ilorin (UNILORIN) be renamed in honour of Sheikh Alimi ibn Solihu ibn Janta, the founder of the Alimi Dynasty, to the federal government.
The people also asked the Kwara State government to order the official portraits of the governor and president in their offices, as well as the portrait of the Emir of Ilorin, to be displayed alongside them in all government offices, captains of industries, and chairmen of the five local government areas in the Ilorin Emirate.
Alh Aliyu Otta-Uthman, the president of the Ilorin Emirate Descendants Progressive Union (IEDPU), made the appeal on behalf of the Emirati people in his speech at the start of the union’s 58th national conference, which was held in the forecourt of the Emir’s palace in Ilorin.
The president of IEDPU commended the state government for its enormous advancements in the field of education, but he also urged it to locate the proposed Kwara State University of Education close to the city of Ilorin.
Otta-Uthman also called for the establishment of a Kwara State University of Science and Technology, Ilorin “which would serve as a training institution where some of our gifted and talented indigenes can develop their inventive acumen and get certified for the needed technological and and economic development of not only our state but of the nation in general”.
On renaming of the University of Ilorin after Sheikh Alimi, the IEDPU president said: “An equally sublime request, which is long overdue, is the renaming of University of Ilorin after Sheikh Alimi to be called Sheikh Alimi University, Ilorin in honour of Sheikh Alimi ibn Solihu ibn Janta, the founder of the Alimi Dynasty just like was done for his contemporaries like Uthman Danfodiyo University Sokoto, named after Sheikh Uthman Danfodiyo, the founder of Sokoto caliphate