History of the Department

The Department was founded in 1992/1993 session as a unit in the department of Arts which was housed by the faculty of Education. Then the Department was known as Unit of Linguistics and Nigerians Languages. The founding lecturers who prepared the B.A. degree programme of studies were Dr. O. M. Anizoba and Dr. G. O. Onyekaonwu.

Later in 1999, the Department of Arts, which had ten-degree awarding units was merged with the faculty of social sciences which then become the faculty of sciences and Arts. In 2001,the ten-Degree Awarding Units became the faculty of arts and each Unit became full Department. Unit of African Language as the Department was called from inception became Department of African Language. Since then the Department has been living up to the reason for establishing it. It has been running continuing Education, Sandwich and Regular.

The department produced her fist set of graduates in 1997/98 session; and has produced up to two hundred and fifty (500) graduates to date most of who are serving in various fields of life.

In 1999/2000 session, the department introduced the Post-Graduate programmes with M.A. student as her first intake. Later, in 2001/2002 the department introduced a Post-Graduate Diploma (PGD) Programme; and in2004/2005 registered her first Ph.D. candidate. At present, the department has Produced about 15 post-Graduate Diploma graduates and over fifty (50) M.A. graduates and twenty (20) Ph.D. graduates in the various fields of Language, Literature, Culture and Translation.

Due to continued lack of interest by students, the Department was having the Problem of few numbers of intakes each year, she then applied to the senate for a new name and the senate approved it on 6^th July 2005. From thence, the Department was known as and called Department of African And Asian Studies. With effect from the 2005/2006 session, the Department started offering courses in Chinese Languages, Culture and Literature. And in 2006/2007, the department included Mass Communication courses in its curriculum.

Later, in 2007/2008 session, the Department introduced a Diploma programme in Chinese to attend to the yearnings of the public, especially the business community in and around the state. The Diploma programme registered the pioneer set of twenty-three (23) students out of which eight (8) graduated in 2008/2009 thus being the first set of Chinese Diploma graduates produced by the Department.

Again, in 2009/2010, there arose serious agitations to change the name of the Department again to highlight Igbo studies and thus help in the present campaign for the promotion of Igbo language. Consequently, at the senate meeting of 14/03/2010, a new name – Department of Igbo, African and Chinese Studies was approved for the Department.