Having the privilege of being among the living in this New Year 2024, despite the multi-dimensional challenges of 2023 is a thing of joy and I congratulate you all, including myself, for this privilege. I thank the almighty God for this, and I welcome you to the New Year. As members of one big and united family of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, LAUTECH, I sincerely appreciate your commitment, dedication, hard work and above all, cooperation toward the unimaginable successes recorded in 2023 despite the newness of the faculty. I want to specifically thank the elders of the faculty – Prof. Dele Afolabi, Prof. AbdulWahab Tijani and Prof. Ade Adejumo for sincerely supporting my deanship and for making things work for the progress of the faculty. Permit me to acknowledge the taxing responsibilities shouldered by the hardworking Heads of Departments – General Studies, Prof. Ade Adejumo; History, Prof. A. Tijani; English and Literary Studies, Prof. Niyi Osunbade; Philosophy, Prof. Olasunkanmi Aborisade; and Sociology, Dr. Austin Omoruan. You have all, together with your departmental staff (academic and non-teaching), done wonderfully well to ensure the success recorded by the faculty in 2023. Let me, as a matter of necessity, precisely acknowledge Prof. Niyi Osunbade for working extra mile to ensure not only his department but also the entire faculty progresses.

As a new faculty, the university recruited for us, members of staff who now work in our various departments. We started and completed the Harmattan semester of the 2022/2023 session, and we are almost done with the Rain semester of the same session. To us, it is an achievement being our debut session. To expand the faculty’s scope in terms of departments' addition, we have got all paperwork ready for the NUC Resource Verification Exercise for five more departments to be added to the existing ones. Let me remind us that the faculty, despite being new, glamorously had its first lecture series in the concluded year 2023 and the second lecture series to be delivered by Prof. AbdulWahab Tijani is scheduled to hold in the 1^st quarter of 2024.

As your Dean, I will not relent in my efforts to ensure that any right and even privilege, due to any faculty member, both academic and non-teaching, is given to them. To reduce the stress on the existing faculty members, the faculty leadership made efforts which resulted in the engagement and posting of a number of non-teaching staff members to work in different departments in the faculty. The promotion of previously Dr Olasunkanmi Aborisade from the Readership position to a Professor is another success recorded in 2023. Let me charge the lecturers on their doctoral programmes to work hard so as to be done in record time. Staff promotion is my joy.

Despite the good performance demonstrated by many of our students, we still have some who performed below what we expected of them in the first semester, and we have challenged them to do better. I want to charge all lecturers to continue to impart knowledge and instil discipline in the students to make them good ambassadors of the faculty and LAUTECH. We, as a faculty, have no option but to be the best in this university and we need to concertedly work as a team to achieve this. To our students, I encourage you to be well-behaved and more serious with your studies as that is the essence of your studentship at LAUTECH.

I welcome you all back to the campus in the New Year 2024 as you return from the Christmas and New Year break. The reward of hard work is more work. So, we need to be more hardworking in the New Year to ensure the system continues to work and better results are produced.

Thank you.