'I Want It Known That a Woman Led and Transformed This University' — Prof. Omenugha Stakes Her Legacy at COOU

She did not arrive at the Vice-Chancellorship of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University simply to occupy the office. She arrived to change it and to ensure that when she leaves, no one will be in any doubt about who brought the change. In one of the most defining statements of her tenure so far, Prof. Kate Azuka Omenugha declared on Thursday, April 23, 2026, that her singular ambition is to build a legacy so clear, so tangible, and so enduring that history will record it without ambiguity: a woman led COOU, and she transformed it.

Prof. Omenugha made the declaration during an interactive session with students held at the ETF Auditorium, Igbariam Campus, as part of activities marking the university's 16th Convocation Week. She was candid, unhurried, and deeply personal, speaking not as an administrator delivering a report but as a leader sharing the vision that gets her up every morning and drives every decision she makes on behalf of the institution.

The evidence she can already point to is considerable. Since assuming office as COOU's 5th substantive Vice-Chancellor and its first female, she has spearheaded a wave of transformation that spans academic development, infrastructural renewal, and dramatically increased institutional visibility. The university's global ranking profile, previously nonexistent, is being actively built. Its 55,000 academic transcripts are being digitised. Its campuses are being held to new standards of environmental responsibility. Its students are being protected with a ferocity that has already become one of the defining characteristics of her administration.

Underlying all of it is a well-structured five-year strategic plan, a document that gives her administration both direction and accountability. The plan is not a wishlist. It is a roadmap, and Prof. Omenugha has made clear that she intends to follow it to its conclusion, ensuring that the reforms she is introducing take root deeply enough to outlast her tenure.

But for the Vice-Chancellor, the legacy she is building is about more than infrastructure and policy. It is about what this moment means, for women in leadership, for an institution that has never before been led by a woman, and for every female student at COOU who now has living proof that the highest office in the university is one she too can aspire to occupy. "I want it known," Prof. Omenugha said, "that a woman led and transformed this university." It is a statement of personal conviction. It is also a promise, to the students she calls her children, to the institution she has given herself to, and to the history that will one day record what happened here.

©️COOUNewS, 2026.