De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) has welcomed the Vice-Chancellor of a leading Nigerian public university to explore a potential new partnership spanning research, sustainability, and digital education.

Professor Kate Azuka Omenugha, Vice-Chancellor of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University (COOU) in Anambra State, Nigeria, visited DMU for a full day of engagement, meeting DMU's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Professor Katie Normington, taking a campus tour, a media interview, and meeting with COOU alumni and students currently studying at DMU.

The two Vice-Chancellors found immediate common ground. Both are the first female Vice-Chancellors at their respective institutions, and both lead universities with a strong commitment to sustainability, community engagement, and international partnership. Their conversation ranged across shared academic priorities, institutional transformation, and the growing connections between the two universities.

Professor Omenugha said: “I share a lot of things in common with Katie, not just our names. She tells me she is the first female Vice-Chancellor here at DMU, as am I at COOU, and it was a good conversation. I was very interested in the ways DMU supports the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and I feel there is real potential for our two universities to have an SDG partnership.”

COOU has itself made a number of sustainability commitments in recent years, including a goal to plant one million trees in the surrounding area and the creation of a new Deputy Vice-Chancellor role with specific responsibility for environmental sustainability - the first of its kind in the country.

The visit identified four priority areas for development under a formal Memorandum of Understanding between the two universities: collaboration through DMU’s United Nations SDG 11 Hub; the development of summer school programmes for COOU students; cybersecurity capacity building and knowledge exchange; and joint research collaborations across shared academic strengths.

As a Professor of Mass Communication and one of Nigeria’s most senior academics in the field, Professor Omenugha had a particular professional interest in DMU’s Leicester Media School. During the campus tour she visited the TV and radio production suites in the Queens Building, home to students on courses including Media Production, and was struck by the quality of the facilities she encountered.

“Going around the university I have seen the standard of technology here and it is so high, it really is super. It is our aim to have such a standard of technology at COOU,” she said.

Professor Omenugha also discussed DMU’s provision in law, computing, artificial intelligence and cyber security, identifying these as areas of particular relevance to COOU’s development priorities. She expressed her hope that the two universities could develop shared online teaching in these areas, building on DMU’s established expertise.

The visit concluded with a gathering of COOU alumni currently studying at DMU, and some others who recently graduated, held in the Vijay Patel Building. The session provided an opportunity for Professor Omenugha to reconnect with graduates of COOU now pursuing postgraduate study in Leicester, and to hear directly about their experiences at DMU.

The visit was initiated and arranged by Anthony Maduabum, a PhD researcher at DMU’s Leicester School of Architecture academic at COOU, who wrote to Professor Normington proposing that the two universities be brought together.

“I came here to DMU to do my PhD and, belonging to the two constituencies, I felt they should be brought together into a relationship”, he said.

Posted on Thursday 27 August 2026