UNIZIK amnesty: Overstayed students get lifeline as Senate opens two-session window
By: Abudu Olalekan
It was quiet at first. Friday, 3rd October 2025. The Faculty of Social Sciences auditorium. Then the room shifted. Heads up. Pens paused. Acting Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Carol Arinze-Umobi, stood and delivered the line many had prayed for but didn’t expect this soon: UNIZIK is granting amnesty to students who have overstayed. Not a rumour. A decision.
No big speeches. No long memos. Just a simple, human fix to a problem that had been building for years. The Senate, at its 238th meeting, heard the flood of appeals from students who has stayed longer than their programmes allowed—missing courses, delayed projects, life detours—and said, alright, let’s make room. Let’s help them finish.
Here’s the heart of it. The amnesty covers two academic sessions: 2025/2026 and 2026/2027. A window, wide enough to breathe but not wide enough to sleep. Use it, the Acting VC warned gently. Clear outstanding work. Meet your departments. Get your house in order—results, project, clearances. Because this is not a forever pass. It’s grace with a clock on it.
Outside the hall, the air felt lighter. You could almost hear the exhale from students who had drifted to the margins, waiting for a door that wouldn’t open. Some had written letter after letter. Some just kept quiet, carrying the weight like a second backpack. Today, they heard something different: come back in, fix it, and go. Mercy with boundaries. It makes sense.
Prof. Arinze-Umobi didn’t frame it as charity. More like responsibility. The university saw the backlog and decided to tidy the house. She told the Senate that the appeals were too many to ignore, and that the fairest path was to create this structured path to completion. Orderly. Measured. Still kind.
But the session wasn’t only about amnesty. There’s momentum on other fronts too. Under her watch, UNIZIK has been chalking up quiet wins. The university was selected as one of three in each of the six geopolitical zones to receive TETFund support for postgraduate sponsorships. That’s not small. It means researchers get tools, students get supervisors who can stand taller, departments get stamina. Over time, outputs grow.
Then came the bit that sounds like bureaucracy but actually means progress in the real world: resource verification. Fourteen panels. Forty-two members. They walked the campus recently, checked labs and libraries, assessed staffing, ticked boxes and asked annoying but necessary questions. Why? To pave the way for twenty-three new academic programmes. New doors. New options. There’s milestones too, and the tone in the room said the work continues.
Through it all, the Acting VC paused to thank the UNIZIK community for keeping the peace. No small thing. Universities thrive on stability like plants thrive on light. When the campus is calm, the work gets done. Students focus. Staff plan. Things move.
What happens next? Practical stuff. Departments will guide students on exact steps—what to register, what to retake, how to reconcile missing grades. Timelines matter. Don’t wait. If you’re an overstayed student reading this, start the conversation now. Meet your HOD. Check your files. Ask dumb questions, because the only dumb question now is the one you didn’t ask. Reportersroom expects the university to publish fuller guidelines; when they drop, we’ll share. Fast.
Also, a note on tone. This amnesty isn’t a free pass. It’s a second chance. Different thing. The Senate were firm about that. Finish your requirements. Meet expectations. Keep discipline tight. You get the runway; you still need to fly the plane.
There will be skeptics, of course. Some will worry about standards. Others will say it should’ve come earlier. Fair points. But fixing problems sometimes looks like this: a policy reset, offered with conditions, built to close a chapter without lowering the bar. If done right, both quality and compassion can stand in the same room without bumping shoulders.
For now, one message rings clear enough: you’ve got time, but not that much. Two sessions. Use them well. And when you walk across that stage at convocation, cap slightly crooked, gown too warm, you’ll know why this mattered. Reportersroom will keep tabs on the timeline, the new programmes, and the TETFund rollout. Because the story isn’t finished. It just turned a page.
