ABSTRACT

I bring the staff, students and well-wishers of the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike, greetings of blessings in the New Year.  The Almighty God deserves all our praises for seeing us through the year AD 2021.  That year was full of God’s grace for us all.  We had a successful leadership transition earlier in the year and we did all we could to carry on from where the administration of our 5^th Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Francis Ogbonnaya Otunta (of Blessed Memory) stopped in February, 2021.  I must pause here to once again pay tribute to our former Vice-Chancellor who contributed so much towards the development of our University, but was cut short soon after his tenure ended.  We miss him so much, but we give the Lord God Almighty, the glory for granting him the grace to successfully finish his tenure, and smoothly hand-over.

The year 2021 was full of mixed feelings.  It accommodated the good, the ugly and the bad.  The University experienced a lot of slowing down due to low funding of our activities.  It experienced slowing down due to adjustment of staff and students to the effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic from which the whole world was coming out after losing the whole of AD 2020 to lockdown and quarantine activities.