…Says, EPU’s ready to buy govt’s 10 percent
President of Rochas Foundation for Africa and former governor of Imo State, Senator Rochas Okorocha has said that the Eastern Palm University (EPU), Ogboko, Imo State, was founded on a Public Private Partnership model in which the Rochas Foundation has 90 percent equity participation while the Imo State government has 10 percent.
Okorocha noted also, that the EPU was not established for profit-making, but to make education accessible to children from less-privileged homes across Africa.
“Ignore the kind of politics we find in this country but the truth is that there is nothing else I desire to achieve in life other than to see that indigent children are not denied education because of the circumstances of their birth,” he said.
Senator Okorocha spoke at the third Matriculation Ceremony of the university on Monday at the institution’s main campus, having defied Governor Hope Uzodimma’s attempt to seal the university last Friday and abort the matriculation which was originally scheduled for Saturday December 5, 2020.
The senator assured the matriculating students that the university will be a centre of excellence, in Africa.
His words: “The Rochas Foundation College, Ogboko was originally located in this premises. And we had had the plan to establish Rochas Foundation University. We had begun to do that before I became governor. When I became governor, the state government did some of the roads here. And considering what the Foundation had already done and what the state government contributed, the 90 percent and 10 percent ratio was arrived at. The state government can also sell off its 10 percent so that the university can be 100 percent owned by the Foundation.”
Okorocha said that the Rochas Foundation Colleges are found in 16 states in the country and have over 25,000 students in all the colleges. He noted that there are about 6000 graduates the Foundation had sponsored through the universities in the country.
